Gov. Sonny Perdue on March 10 dropped one of the main tenets of government, to support people in our community who are among our most vulnerable. The Governor's revision to the Fiscal Year 2009 state budget, with sweeping cuts across many agencies, means that Georgians living with disabilities, and their families, who are in desperate need, will soon feel the consequences of Perdue's recommendation to withdraw his commitment.

I have the honor of coordinating a statewide campaign called Unlock the Waiting Lists! The mission of this grass-roots campaign is to reduce and/or eliminate "waiting lists" for thousands of people who have disabilities and who need assistance to live as independently as possible, near family and friends and in their chosen communities. You know these people; they live in your community. They are your neighbors, friends and colleagues.

Without the security of long-term supports, many people with disabilities can end up on our streets, in hospitals, institutions or even jails.

Unfortunately, Georgia has for many years so underfunded these supports that today there are more than 5,500 Georgians with disabilities who are in desperate need of help. As our state continued to ignore this crisis in the past, many people who originally required only minimal supports now need far more assistance. In the meantime, this waiting list has continued to grow.

Every year approximately 700 young adults with disabilities leave or graduate from high school and move onto these waiting lists. Further, as our population ages, so do people with disabilities and their parents.

Today, more than 17,000 fellow Georgians with developmental disabilities live with a caregiver aged 60 or older. Imagine a parent in their later years struggling to plan the future for their adult child with a developmental disability. Many of these parents will tell you that they are afraid to die.

Since 2004, with compassionate leadership from the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees —- Rep. Ben Harbin (R-Evans) and Sen. Jack Hill (R-Reidsville) —- and with complete bipartisan support, the governor and the General Assembly set a course to fulfill their promise to address the waiting list at a historic level each year until the waiting list was a thing of the past. As this problem did not present itself overnight, it cannot be solved overnight. However, by allocating funds over several years, Georgia could gradually begin to have a huge impact on the lives of these Georgians.

With all due respect to significant past supports, Perdue's current revision undercuts these plans and turns back the clock on this issue and the thousands of Georgia families waiting for support. If you could hear the stories being told by parents, you would know that fear and frustration for the future are at the core of their worries. Their needs are not tied to revenue projections. Parents at their wits' end do not profess to understand the complicated formulas used to define budget revenues, or the Solomonlike decisions of prioritizing a $21.1 billion state budget. They simply tell us their honest stories of overwhelming need, and are left to pray that their trust in our state legislators is well-founded. I, too, pray for our governor and General Assembly to have the courage and resolve to honor commitments made to 5,500 Georgians waiting for our help.

Dave Blanchard is director of public policy for the Atlanta Alliance on Developmental Disabilities, a 52-year-old nonprofit organization building communities of support, acceptance and opportunity for children, adults and families living with developmental disabilities. For more information visit www.aadd.org or write dave@aadd.org