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The Memphis Center for
Independent Living Journal

Index
of the MCIL Journal 1998

2/16/98 12:25 am
Dawn just called me from the airport to say that Andrew Cuomo, Secetary of HUD, will issue a memo that states: "Nursing home beds cannot be counted as housing."

More on this in the next issue of The Declaration!

A lot of stuff is going on:

Don't miss the most recent Mouth investigative report of the DOJ
Tennessee has many "Long-term" care bills in the State Legislature - But none will give people with disabilities any more control of their lives.
Memphis Title II problems

This dispatch is from Lucy Gwin. Editor of The Mouth.

We crawled to get the Americans with Disabilities Act.

What will we have to do to get it enforced?

Mouth magazine today reports to its readers on the results of a five-month investigation into the U.S. Department of Justice and its enforcement of disability rights law. The report concludes that the DOJ could well be charged with obstruction of justice for its failure to enforce the civil rights of people with disabilities.

The facts, in brief:

In six years of enforcement, the Disability Rights Section of the DOJ has brought only one ADA case to trial and judgment. One.
That Section has a $9.3 million annual budget and a staff of 85. 23 of those staff are trial attorneys, 6 are managing attorneys, 2 are architects, 16 are investigators. The rest are technical assistance staff and attorneys hired as paralegals.
Of 35 ADA lawsuits which have so far set legal precedent, only 3 were suits initiated by the DOJ. Two of those are still pending in court.
Between January 1, 1994, and December 31, 1997, the DOJ opened 6,339 ADA cases, filing suit in four. 5,525 cases were still open, unresolved, on January 1, 1998.
In employment of people with disabilities, the DOJ ranks 48th of 49 federal agencies which employ more than 1,000 people .41 percent of the DOJ workforce compared to 1.18 percent of the total civilian workforce in all federal agencies.
The Disability Rights Section's July-September 1997 Status Report claims that "80 percent of mediated [ADA] cases have successful outcomes." Liz Savage, DOJ's liaison to the disability community, told us the same. That fact is not in evidence. Figures The Mouth obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that 135 ADA cases have gone to mediation. 58 percent of them, not 80 percent, were closed after mediation. The other cases were closed as "unresolved by mediation."
In three interviews with The Mouth, the DOJ's liaison to the disability community, Liz Savage, told us that ending segregation is not a DOJ priority. "Not specifically," she said.
John Wodatch, Director of the DOJ's Disability Rights Section, represented HEW (now HHS) in Cherry v. Mathews, where HEW resisted enforcing Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. When he lost that suit in 1976, Wodatch was himself placed in charge of enforcing Section 504 and remains its primary enforcement officer today. If 504 had been enforced over the last 22 years, America's courthouses and colleges and social services and prisons and hospitals and public schools any entity receiving federal funding would be accessible today. They are not.

Steve Gold says "The federal government has totally abdicated its responsibility for enforcement of disability rights."

You can let the Department of Justice know we expect them to get down to business and do their job. President Clinton has appointed a new man, Bill Lann Lee, as Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. His address is Department of Justice, Room 5643, 10th and Constitution NW, Washington DC 20530.

See you in Memphis before long...

Love, Lucy

Long-term care in Tennessee

Long-term care bills are filling the halls of the Tennessee Legislature, but none of the lawmakers are going to let people with disabilities run their own lives. The rush of legislative activity follows a report of the Comptroller of the Treasury on "Long-Term Care of Tennessee's Elderly."

Some of the highlights of that report are:

45,000 of all ages were in Tennessee's 336 nursing homes in 1995.
39,000 or 6 thousand less were in those nursing homes in 1994
There are 32 nursing homes in Shelby County
(p. 26) "Some nursing homes residents may not need nursing care."
(p. 28) "Shelby County Home and Community Based Services Waiver Project, was found to be cost-effective in a 1994 performance audit by the Tennessee Comptroller's Office." [However, only 258 of 400 slots are used].

What about the Long-Term Care Bills?

Although the language in the proposed legislation says, "...enhance independence, dignity and privacy," the lawmakers still want to dictate what that means. The simple way to give Americans independence, dignity and privacy is to give the citizens the ability to choose how the services are to be delivered. Consumer control works in every other area of our free-market system, it is silly not to extend this liberty to people with disabilities.

Tell your state legislators to add consumer control to SENATE BILLs 2411; 2412; 2195; and 2124.

Memphis is in Title II hot water.

Be part of the cities attempt to comply with the law. It should be a laugh. Come and enjoy at 1633 Madison Avenue on Feb. 25, at 2 in the afternoon. Call MCIL 726-6404 Today to be a part of making Memphis accessible.

Tim Wheat
Memphis Center for Independent Living

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The Memphis Center for Independent Living Journal

Long-term care in Tennessee

What about the Long-Term Care Bills?

Memphis is in Title II hot water.

The Memphis Center for
Independent Living Journal