DART faces funding cuts
Programs that help victims of violent crimes across Louisiana are facing budget shortages this year due to sizable cuts in federal funding.
Here at home that affects the Domestic Abuse Resistance Team (DART), an organization headquartered in Ruston that serves victims in a seven-parish region by providing a shelter, crisis intervention, counseling, children’s services and more.
With funding from the federal Victims of Crimes Act (VOCA) on the decline, DART is out $80,000 this year, half of its previous allocation, Community Advocate Terrie Queen Autrey said.
“This grant paid for our first two staff people back in 1989,” Autrey said. “It doesn’t go to administrative costs, office products, things like that — it’s directly for help to victims.”
If not offset, this loss in funding could lead to staff and programming cuts that make it harder for DART and similar agencies to meet the needs of victims.
That’s why DART and its parent organization, the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence (LCADV), are targeting the state government’s budget as a possible source of alternative funding.
Total federal VOCA grant allocations have fallen 58% from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, domestic violence is trending in the opposite direction.
Louisiana is top five in the nation in homicides per capita in which a woman is killed by a man.
A 2021 report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office found that more than 2,600 requests for shelter by victims of violent crimes go unmet each year because there is no shelter space for them.
There are 17 domestic violence shelters in Louisiana trying to cover 64 parishes. DART covers seven.
“The need far outpaces the available resources,” said Mariah Wineski, LCADV executive director.
Meanwhile, Louisiana provides no funding for agencies like DART.
“At the end of the day, our state budget is a reflection of our state’s priorities,” Wineski said. “It speaks loudly that this is an issue our state has not chosen to fund in the past. But it is our hope that in this session, our state values can be appropriately reflected in this budget.”
The organization is lobbying for a $15 million appropriation in the state budget to flow through the Department of Children and Family Services and into domestic violence shelters around the state.
Autrey said DART advocates met with every lawmaker in its coverage area before the current legislative session to apprise them of the situation. She had nothing but positive things to say about each legislators’ reception to their message.
Nonetheless, House Bill 1, the House’s budget proposal, passed the chamber without the requested domestic violence funding.
It’s now in the Senate’s hands. “We’re focusing on the Senate at this time and making sure senators understand the opportunity we have this year to turn things around for domestic violence services,” Wineski said.
That opportunity is bolstered by two straight years of large surpluses in the state budget, such that now Louisiana is sitting on a roughly $1.6 billion surplus.
There is an effort to raise the state’s expenditure limit to allow more of that surplus to be spent, but Wineski said LCADV expects their request could easily be funded with or without that raised cap.
HB1 currently awaits a hearing in the Senate’s Finance Committee. Autrey said DART may head down to Baton Rouge in the coming days to further advocate their position.
