Representatives from 12 different community service organizations met with Sen. Dan Sparks and Rep. Dan Dorman on Tuesday morning at the Freeborn County United Way office to discuss the effects of the state budget shortfall on their agencies.

&uot;For many of these groups there are no private funds to fall back on if a cut is made,&uot; said Sheri Hird, grant writer for the United Way.

An uncertain future lies ahead for a few groups who rely heavily on state funding. While some programs are mandated by state and federal laws, others fall into the ‘non’ category and have few options when their funding gets cut off.

&uot;We’re not a mandated service,&uot; Rose Olmsted of the Crime Victim’s Crisis Center said. &uot;So many people in our organization are questioning whether we are still going to be in existence after this next year.&uot;

The CVCC receives resources from the Department of Human Resources, which Olmsted says is having to cut $1 billion in spending for 2003. She thinks her program, which provides programs for children who witness violence and has programs for victims of domestic abuse, is at risk.

Like almost all groups at the event, the CVCC covers a specific group of people and has a specific agenda for helping. But cutting funding for these programs, Olmsted said, will just push the responsibility into the hands of another organization.

The organizations that get this run-off aren’t always well-suited to deal with the specific problems handled by other groups.

Organizations like the Salvation Army act as a last option for people looking for the kind of help that specialized agencies offer.

Hird said groups such as these can’t serve as well when other agencies are cut, so cuts could affect more than just a specific group.

While the roundtable discussion did bring that point up quite often, most groups in attendance weren’t going to be directly affected by cuts.

Both Sparks and Dorman listened intently through the meeting and did not comment much.

Dorman did say that one solution to some problems for families in need would be to lower taxes to create a better environment for job creation.

Sparks said, &uot;We have a very difficult job ahead of us with the deficit. As a state we need to decide what we need to do in order to fix this problem while remembering what is important to us.&uot;

United Way director Jean Eaton said her organization is also affected by cuts because it means that more agencies ask for more money from the United Way.

Eaton said she hoped all of the organizations represented could speak with the officials and that they’d be kept in mind in setting the state budget.