Money well spent

Multnomah County has released their new budget and here are some interesting line items.

Program #25027 - African American Youth A&D Treatment
Leo Ni Leo is the only African-American culturally specific A&D adolescent program in Multnomah County. The Leo Ni Leo (“Time Is Now” in Swahili) program directly impacts the integration of the physical health, mental health, and behavioral health (addictions) needs of African-American adolescent males who have become involved with alcohol and drugs and are in danger of or have become involved with the criminal justice system.

At least 54 youth will receive Leo Ni Leo services in FY05.
Program Total: $577,564 (FY 2006)
Pretend that this program has the same "success" in '06 that it did in '05 and what you get is a cost of $10695.62 per youth (of a certain skin color only) served. What a bargain. But thankfully "Less than 20% of the youth in the program will report arrests while in treatment." The keyword there is report.

Program #40026A - Healthy Birth and Early Childhood Services (Part A)
The general fund is used to provide a broad umbrella of services for pregnant women and their children who are poor but ineligible for the Oregon Health plan. Typically these are undocumented residents, teenage mothers, or working poor who do not have sufficient insurance to cover a medically needy child.

Program Total: $8,387,952
This program is to help "undocumented residents" and teenage sluts by fullfilling the nanny state obligations envisioned by Kitzhaber. Home visits and "targeted services" (cultural competency garbage) are this programs specialty.

Program #10013 - Cultural Diversity Conference
The diversity conference continues to receive excellent evaluations. we have been tracking the same data for the past 4 years and the evaluation are positive. Evaluation data shows a consistently high degree of satisfaction with and usefulness of the conference. Over 300 employees attended the conference and 91% rated it either a good or an excellent use of their time.

Program Total: $40,000
Government employees get paid to attend a conference rather than do their work, but they rate it as an "excellent" use of their time. (and tax dollars)

Program #71006A - Human Resources - Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action
This program contributes to strengthening County workforce competencies and the environment needed to achieve quality results by developing staff competencies related to diversity and inclusion. It develops, markets, and monitors policies, programs and avenues that help create a culturally safe environment where safe communication can occur.

Program Total: $412,471
What can I say? Multnomah County is more worried about a "culturally safe" working environment than they are about safe streets that aren't filled with meth junkies.

Program #71006D - Diversity-Cultural Competency
The position requested is an existing position that has been temporarily assigned to this project from another department. That arrangement is no longer feasible. To enable implementation of the policy framework to proceed, this position needs to be moved permanently into the diversity office. In addition, funding is required to conduct organizational assessments and 360 degree evaluations to be able to respond quickly and effectively to the current climate and situations.

Program Total: $145,195
More garbage.

Program #25026 - A&D Acupuncture
Acupuncture services were delivered to approximately 700 clients in outpatient treatment and more than 500 clients in detoxification last year and this year's results should be similar.

Program Total: $89,481
For those of you who thought that the best way to stop using drugs was to just quit, you obviously don't have the wisdon of the Multnomah County acupuncture program. Next up: aromatherapy.

This is not a comprehensive list but just a few of the programs that I would gladly exchange for an increase in jail funding.