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Lar Mundstock is Executive Director of the United Cambodian Association of Minnesota. She says, under the proposed cuts, her entire youth violence program will lose all of its funding. She says the implications are far-reaching.

Mundstock: The concern I have is that you can say an agency comes here to get funding to protect itself, but it's not for us, it's for the community and for the people. The bottom line is the safety of the society.

Avner: And the very programs that have been cut are predominantly self-sufficiency programs which get people off of welfare and into school and jobs that pay and he's talked about leveraging and the state dollars that support these programs, in every instance, leverage other resources. So the goals of this administration of self-sufficiency and leveraging are, in fact, met by the very programs targeted for cuts.

O'Keefe: That's a good question, I don't have an answer. I could duck and dodge but no, I don't have an answer.

Westunberg: It will end the minute security is nervous. They get hives - and the doors are locked.

Wustenberg: There is no stupid question. The governor says that over and over again. And that frees us to ask stupid questions ourselves and for you to ask them. Like, why are we doing this? Or gee, you know, fine - you took this action on the budget but did you think about the policy implication that these pass-through grants have no home?

She says the administration simply didn't have enough time to gather public input before the budget was due.

Commissioner O'Keefe encouraged the non-profits to focus on the future. He asked for their support of the proposed Minnesota Families Foundation, saying the $30 million that would be made available by the foundation would be in the form of grants to non-profits. But as many in the room pointed out, the foundation's budget is half of the proposed $60 million in cuts and at least two years away. Many said if the cuts become law, doors to their programs could be locked up as early as June of this year.

Avner: But I don't think any of the people here felt reassured about the potential for restoring the funds for these programs. There were many questions raised about what to do with programs that will in fact end in three months without funding and without really any time frame to prepare for changes in funding; and there are no answers to any of those questions. The cuts are not a done deal yet by any means. Legislators will debate this funding until the very end of the session. In the meantime they can expect to be lobbied by the non-profit sector to restore them.