State confirms centers face cuts

More details have emerged on a proposal that would cut funding for the rape crisis center in Jackson County and similar centers throughout Florida. A 2009 budget cut proposal by the Florida Department of Health will go before the next legislative session.

On the proposed chopping block is the Rape Crisis Program Trust Fund, which holds money from fees imposed on violent offenders. Under current law, those fees must be used for services provided to sexual assault victims.

Other smaller state trust funds, including one that funds county health departments, may also be eliminated.

The plan is to rewrite the law so that those fees can be spent elsewhere by the state, said Amy Thomas, sexual violence program coordinator for the Salvation Army Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Program.

Thomas said the approximate $2 million cut statewide would force the Northwest Florida program to discontinue services to victims of sexual assault, leaving hundreds in the Panhandle without free and confidential services.

The Department of Health’s Budget Office Bureau Chief Terry Walters confirmed Thursday that there is a proposal to dissolve the trust fund, but added the key word in the matter is “proposed.”

“The certified rape crisis programs through out the state of Florida are certified through the Florida Counsel Against Sexual Violence, which is a state program,” Thomas explained. “We’re a relatively new type of program, compared to domestic violence and education, so we’re not as visible. And now we’re on the chopping block.”

If the trust fund is closed, victims of sexual violence would have to pay for their own mental health therapist or counselor. Many women don’t have the means to do that, Thomas said.

She cited Life Management, a local private nonprofit, as an option for victims in need of services. But since the organization handles a wide variety of issues, it can be difficult for sexual violence victims to get the immediate and intensive assistance they need, Thomas said.

Thomas said she’s assisted about 70 victims so far this year.

The effects of a loss of funding could be worse in rural areas like Jackson County, where a victim is more likely to know their attacker and the authorities who would be handling the crime, she said.

The cut would destroy vital services for thousands of victims of rape, but do nothing to improve the state’s budget outlook, Thomas said, because all money in the trust fund is derived from fines on offenders. None of these funds come from general revenue.

As the trust fund is set up now, the total amount of each offender’s fee goes directly into the Rape Crisis Program Trust Fund, Walters said. From there, the state disperses funds to different certified rape crisis centers.

“The trust fund doesn’t cost (DOH) anything. We bring in revenue to support the trust,” she said.

According to Walters, if the offender fee remains intact after legislative session, the money generated from such fees would go into the state’s general revenue budget.

“So that legislators would have a pot of money to work with,” Walters said.

The decision to propose the elimination of the trust fund was based on it’s size.

Walters said that with larger trust funds, including the administrative trust fund that covers her salary, cash from the trust fund will be handed over to the state for the 2009 fiscal year. The actual trust fund remains intact to provide future funding.

DOH included other small trust funds in its proposal to dissolve them for 2009, Walters said, including the epilepsy services trust fund, the county health departments fund, tobacco trust fund, brain and spinal cord research fund and local health counsels fund.

All of these proposed eliminations will first be reviewed by Gov. Charlie Crist for approval in late January. Crist’s proposed budget would then go to legislature for approval.

“Florida is asking innocent survivors of sexual violence to make do with a bare minimum safety net,” Thomas wrote in an e-mail. “We cannot ask those traumatized by crime to get by with no help and stand by as rape crisis centers close their doors.”