From: CHARLES CRAWFORD 
To: willie@telerama.lm.com
Subject: Crisis in Kentucky - Part 1
              KENTUCKY - GROUND ZERO FOR THE
BLIND!
Does the continuation of specialized services for people who
are  blind  matter  enough  to  take a stand?  The answer to this
question may well be played out in the State of Kentucky over the
next few days and weeks.  Read the following and think and act
upon your commitment to the importance of separate and
specialized agencies for the blind. The citizens of Massachusetts
were able to fight off a similar attack, who will be next.
Solidarity and unity on this issue is critical. Do what you can
to help the blind community of Kentucky.
Kim Charlson, President
Bay State Council of the Blind
57 Grandview Avenue
Watertown, MA 02172
email: klcharlson@delphi.com
"Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996
To:     My Colleagues in Rehabilitation:
From:   Priscilla Rogers
        Commissioner
        Ky. Department for the Blind
Date:   June 10, 1996
Subj:   Resignation
I have resigned from my position as Commissioner of the Kentucky
Department for the Blind, effective June 19, 1996.  As I said in
my resignation letter to the Cabinet Secretary, `I have struggled
with my conscience and have decided I cannot participate in a
process which, I feel, tears apart  the Department for the Blind,
is totally unjustified and unnecessary,  and  which  was  decided
upon without the involvement of our Department and consumers  who
are blind. . .
Having  been  in  this field for all of my professional career, I
believe  profoundly  in  the  need  for  a  separate  agency  for
individuals  who  are  blind.  I cannot work in a system which is
diametrically opposed to my beliefs and professional standards.'
I have enjoyed working with  all  of  you  over  the past several
years  as  we have worked to improve our programs and  to  insure
that the mandates  of  the 1992 amendments are fully carried out.
I leave feeling very proud  of the record of my agency in meeting
these outcomes."
What you have just read  are  not  the words of a bureaucrat
looking to save her job.  No, they are the  words  of a woman who
clearly knows the importance of specialized services  for  people
who are blind and obviously has seen her career as not some  kind
of job, but a privilege to serve other blind people.
What  do she  and the blind community in Kentucky get for
this?  A cash register  mentality  from  a  Cabinet Secretary who
could  care  less  about why blind people need their  own agency.
After all, we can get  better service from a generic agency where
the administrative cost  savings will yield more services for the
blind.  Right!  Sure and how  come  all those extra services were
not available when there was no blind  agency?   Sounds  like the
same old song jazzed up for the 90's.
What you can do!
It's simple.  Send as much email to the Governor of Kentucky
as  we  can  letting  him  know  that  the  idea of combining the
services for the blind into another department  is  a  major step
backwards in making sure the interests of the blindness community
are  taken care of, and that he must make sure that the blindness
agency  remains  independent;  and  give that Cabinet Secretary a
talking to out behind the bureaucratic  barn!  If the Governor of
Kentucky is made aware that blind people  across  the  nation and
the world find his Cabinet Secretary to have made a serious error
in judgement, then it is likely that he will give the Secretary a
piece  of  the  blind community's collective mind!  Otherwise,
the blind  of Kentucky may become  only  the  first to fall as
Governors across the nation decide the pennies they  save  are
worth the pain they impose.
Write:
Governor Paul E. Patton
State Capitol
700 Capitol Avenue
Frankfort, Ky 40601
You  can email him at the following address  for  his  press
office:
mpfeiffer@mail.state.ky.us
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