Nearly 75 percent of the funding for the nonprofit George Bray Center was cut Thursday from the state budget on a party line vote in the Joint Committee on Finance.
With a 12-4 vote, lawmakers slashed $124,350 from the Center’s budget among other cuts to youth diversion grant funding, a story in The Journal Times reads. The cut represents every dollar of state funding the center had been receiving.
Racine County Eye reached out to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for comment, and we will update this story when we hear from him.
Executive Director Jameel Ghuari told the newspaper he thinks politics are at the center of the cut, particularly the Bray Center’s voter registration efforts.
“We believe people should have the right to participate in a democracy. This is an attempt to stop that,” he is quoted as saying.
Despite the cut, Ghuari stressed that nothing would change at the George Bray Center – which operates as a separate entity from the City of Racine and always has since it was founded in 1961, the story continues.
Racine Mayor John Dickert criticized the cut, telling The Journal Times that cutting funding for a community center that serves inner city children will not bode well for the future.
“It really disappoints me that the state of Wisconsin continues to make cuts on facilities within cities, especially facilities that assist children,” Dickert is quoted as saying. “Those types of cuts will come back to bite us in the future.”