By Daniel Rubin
Inquirer Columnist
Liberty Resources is always an inspiring place to visit - an agency that works for the disabled, staffed mostly by the disabled.
Any complaints about your own aches die on your lips once you step into 714 Market St. and see the people moving about on crutches, in wheelchairs, on oxygen, working through myriad physical challenges.
The place is a lot less hectic these days. On May 5, Liberty had to send 133 people packing because the state has clamped down on the way such organizations use their money.
It's a complicated accounting matter that a state Department of Public Welfare spokeswoman told me was mandated by the feds. The effect is that Liberty lost 43 percent of its staff in Philadelphia and Allentown, which can only gut services for thousands of physically disabled people in the eastern portion of the state.
Most of those let go had made life easier for other disabled people, helping them buy SEPTA tokens, deal with contractors making their homes accessible, cut red tape and file paperwork, listen, understand.
Linda Dezenski is the agency's chief operating officer, a 51-year-old woman born with cerebral palsy. She says the place feels as if it's been leveled by a natural disaster.
"These are people whose lives I know, whose stories I know. Never in 30 years had we ever had to lay anyone off, and now. . . ."
When the news broke, Madeleine McMahon, 53, Liberty's coordinator of national policy and advocacy, was in Washington getting arrested.
On May 2, disability-rights advocates heard a pep talk from Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), who was locked up dozens of times in the battle for civil rights. That afternoon was McMahon's turn.
Capitol Police handcuffed her and scores of others protesting cuts to Medicaid. They spent the night sleeping on the floor.
McMahon was heading back to Philadelphia when her boss told her of Liberty's bad news.
Her work of eight years was now over - work she believed her late father, a SEPTA organizer, would have admired.
"It's not just about us losing our jobs," she said Wednesday in her living room in the LaMott section of Cheltenham. "It's about people who will lose the ability to go to their children's birthday parties. For every one of us let go, there's 10 to 15 people who won't get services that let them live at home or in their communities."
She speaks selflessly, but once her insurance runs out, she'll have trouble affording the ADHD medication she needs to keep her thoughts on task.
"Without the meds, I can stare into space for lots of hours. I get a little more short-tempered. I'll stay busy, but it's not with things that most benefit me."
Her partner, Susan Shachter, works for the Defender Association of Philadelphia, advocating for young offenders, so she brings in money.
But with two adopted daughters and an infant grandson, the budget will be extremely tight. McMahon sees her best move as temporarily swapping houses with a Philadelphia family that wants to send kids to the Cheltenham schools, people who can pay the higher mortgage and taxes.
"I'll be fine," McMahon said, steering the conversation back to the disabled. Liberty stopped accepting new clients in March, turning away 700 people so far, Dezenski said, because of the $13 million loss.
That's the same amount Liberty Resources figures it saves the commonwealth every year by keeping disabled people from having to go to nursing homes. Some coincidence.
The change in funding, decided at the end of the Rendell administration, means that groups such as Liberty can no longer offset the cost of services with the money it makes helping manage the paperwork of clients who hire their own aides.
That's how Liberty made ends meet. McMahon has a nice way of explaining it: Picture a table with four legs, each representing a reimbursement rate from the state.
"They sawed one leg off the table. Everything is sliding off the table."
It makes no sense, McMahon said, to cut one rate while failing to adjust the others. Unless, she said, the state wants to keep the disabled from living on their own.
I'll always blame bureaucratic bungling over a fine-tuned conspiracy. Not McMahon.
"Once they separate us, there are fewer eyes on us," she says, "and we do die faster."