Next up on the chopping block in Michigan: news for blind people. The state is
cutting funding for a service that provides free audio access to hundreds of newspapers and magazines, used by about 3,100 people in the state. The amount it costs? A whopping $52,000. The costs of losing it are significant, though:
Georgia Kitchen of Flint, who is blind and volunteers as a state coordinator of Newsline, said the service provides blind people not just with news, but with leads on jobs through classified ads and information about things going on in the community.
Losing the service will make blind people “more isolated,” Kitchen said.
A spokesman for a state agency issued a statement suggesting there might be some hope, saying "An initial request to fund the new grant cycle was denied by the bureau," but not that it was game over. For now, though, the service connecting 3,100 people to news, job leads, and what's going on in their communities is slated to go silent at midnight Saturday. Talk about your stupid austerity.