THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 11, 1995 TAG: 9509110057
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Federal officials are warning their local counterparts that proposed federal budget cuts would mean added burdens on local services.
Representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor spoke Thursday to 65 local officials.
The meeting came as Congress returned to Washington to take up spending bills that include deep cuts Republicans say are needed to balance the budget by 2002.
``Changes in Washington are on fast-forward,'' said Karen A. Miller, the mid-Atlantic representative for HUD.
The fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Huge sections of the federal government will be shut down if President Clinton and the GOP-controlled Congress do not agree on the budget before then.
``The House has determined that HUD's affordable housing and economic development programs will take a cumulative 25 percent hit, and that means so will Virginia,'' Miller said. ``Unlike the number of homeless, which will probably not decline precipitously 23 days from now, homeless funding is to be cut by 40 percent.''
``(My department) is in the prevention business. I'm here to talk about another kind of prevention today: the prevention of a reckless national direction that would diminish the continued ability of my department and others to prevent some of our nation's problems,'' said Lynn Hardy Yeakel, a former Democratic congresswoman and regional director of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Dan Shavez, a senior officer of the Department of Labor, warned of cuts of 30 percent to 50 percent in Virginia jobs programs.
W. Michael McCabe, the Philadelphia-based regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, told the city and county officials that ``there's going to be a lot more pressure on you all.''
McCabe named 10 cleanup projects that could cease in Virginia. ``We need to approach this in a more surgical fashion, not with the meat ax the House of Representatives has handed us.'' by CNB