Helping disabled is ‘not a free ride’

From the Rocky Mountain News:

Kelly Stahlman, a mother of twins with cerebral palsy, says she was a conservative Republican and never dreamed of seeking government services until faced with the reality of caring for her children.

Now she supports Amendment 51, which would increase Colorado’s sales tax by a fraction of a percent to raise $186 million for services for people with disabilities. Stahlman’s sons require round the clock care. She says she enjoys her children but also says “it’s physically demanding, it’s emotionally demanding and it’s heart demanding … Just because we’re parents doesn’t mean we can do it all.”

Colorado’s spending is one of the nation’s lowest, and more than 8,000 are on waiting lists for immediate services …

David Braddock, executive director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado, told the legislature last year that Colorado’s expenditures for the developmentally disabled were 73 percent below the national average.

See earlier posts here and here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Campaign 2008, cerebral palsy, law, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.