Cut to the Corps

There is much blame to go around for the massive cuts in the nationwide volunteer program known as AmeriCorps – the agency failed to plan ahead, Congress took away much of its money and federal budget managers can’t agree on how much money should be kept in its trust fund. None of this matters, however, to a Bangor resident who needs a ramp built to his house or to the woman in Lubec whose health screening found a tumor before it was too late for treatment. What matters is that the cuts announced this week mean that the number of AmeriCorps volunteers in Maine will dwindle from 160 to 10.

There is no zero missing, the number of volunteers will decrease by almost 93 percent. Nationally, AmeriCorps, which was founded in 1993, has funded 50,000 positions each year. That would drop to as few as 3,000 this fall because of the budget and accounting problems.

The cuts will also stifle the plans of many workers from defunct mills who make up a large proportion of Maine’s AmeriCorps personnel because 1,700 hours of volunteer service comes with a $4,725 education grant, money that can go a long way toward learning at new trade at the state’s community colleges.

The massive cuts come during an era of “compassionate conservatism,” when President Bush vowed to increase opportunities for national service and to increase AmeriCorps by 50 percent to 75,000 volunteers nationwide. Despite the rosy rhetoric, AmeriCorps is being cut deeply and no one from the White House has come to its defense.

Instead, Congress, which is partly responsible for the debacle, is working to restore enough funding to get more volunteers working this fall. First, a group of senators, including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, is urging President Bush to submit a supplemental budget request for $200 million to keep AmeriCorps from dropping below its current 50,000 volunteers. If President Bush fails to do this, the senators should appropriate the money on their own. The Senate passed a measure Thursday co-sponsored by Sen. Collins that would increase the number of volunteers that can serve this year. In Maine, this means 20, not 10, bodies. A welcome start, but clearly this is not enough.

To ensure that AmeriCorps does not end up in such a crisis again, its bookkeeping and planning must drastically improve. The current panic was caused because the Corporation for National Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, did not account for the continued educational payments to past volunteers who are now in school. Paying the $4,725 due past volunteers, who have up to seven years to collect the education award, meant that very few new volunteers could be brought into the program. However, there would be more money for these payments in the National Service Trust if Congress had not taken $110 million in 1999 and 2000 because the balance appeared to be in excess of usage rates. Now that the tables are turned, the money must be put back in.

Since 1998, AmeriCorps has recruited more than 28,000 Mainers as volunteers to work with more than 300 local non-profit agencies in 132 towns.

The volunteers tutor children, provide safety training to migrant workers, monitor water quality, retrofit homes for seniors and the disabled and respond to disasters. It is much too much work for 10 people.