Million deficit. We have a 7. 6 unemployment rate. This year and the next we do twoyear budgets, by the way. This year its about 123 million deficit for this next fiscal year. The following year of 1415, is about 256 million deficit. So, we plan for two years, but well meet every year just to talk through it. And then were doing really well on our employment. We have about a 6. 3 unemployment rate. So, its gone down another big percentage point. I want to keep driving that down. My goal is to get to the 5 or even below. That means a lot more people have jobs and create their own destinies. And i need to have that happen because government cant do everything. Well do the gaps. Well help, of course, with our seniors, our lowincome families, our children need us to provide the programs. But we have to invest really smartly these days. And i think if theres any theme that all of us are working hard on is how to properly invest as our city totally recovers. And many of you will talk to us a
Whole purpose of these budget town halls is to listen to our neighbors, our residents, to find out what you think matters in our city. I just wanted to put a little backdrop that a year ago when we started holding these community meetings, we had some significant budget deficits. And in years past they were even worse. Now weve come through a lot of that and im thankful to all the Department Heads that are here because they worked very hard to work with me to find all the efficiencies, to make sure we balance that budget. Clearly, the members of the board of supervisors and today were focused on districts 1 and 4, but i want to thank supervisor mar, supervisor tang, and supervisor farrell for providing their leadership at the board because we can only make it work if the mayor and the board work together. But most importantly, weve got to listen carefully to our residents. And i want to begin by saying this has been a pretty intense week for all of us. You know, we all watched together
Be on this stage with these remarkable, indeed, extraordinary women, and i want to recognize, if i may, very quickly, another woman of courage, the first lady was kind enough to introduce her but she marched against apartheid as a student in south africa. She worked hard in the decades since to improve the lives of women with respect to the environment and health, and i am delighted to call her my wife. [applause] as you know, i returned less than 48 hours ago from europe and the middle east where i visited the countries that represent a very Broad Spectrum of progress on gender equality, and i met with dozens of leaders, but i also listened to a lot of every day citizens. People who, like todays honorees, know that you dont have to be elected or appointed in order to make a difference. I spoke with one woman in berlin. She is muslim. She told me she is part of an organization of teenagers who have created a dialogue about equality and tolerance, so my friends, steps from the markings,
My son signed a medical release so the doctors could talk to us. We did not know this because the doctors were not talking to us. We found out after he was deceived. Read the medical records. We found out he signed a release. The doctors still would not talk to us. The way the law is written, it is still up to the doctor whether he chooses to talk to you or not. The other question i have announced that no one can seem to answer is, if a patient signs a release, cancels it, and reinstates it, and cancels it, does there have to be a paper trail on that . I cannot seem to find that. There does not seem to be a rule on how that works. How do we know if doctors can talk to a patient . If they signed to a release and verbally cancel it, who would know . None of that is documented in the medical records. I wanted to let members know something interesting. Four states and the District Of Columbia have claimed the privacy rule is preventing them from putting records into a National Criminal dat
Bret, how did all of this come to light . Well, jon, this was the result of a foia request by the Washington Times, the specific story youre talking about in regards to when the Obama Transition Team was briefed about the problems at the va. The other scandals that have, the allegations have come up for at least 11 states now. And investigations are ongoing. So this is snowballing as you have lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for more in depth investigations and bringing in the fbi. Jon there is a former member of the va staff, high level staffer, who had this to say to congress a few weeks ago when some of these allegations first came up. I want to play you for this now. To date, we found no evidence of a secret list, and we have found no patient who is have died because they have been on a wait list. That was dr. Robert petzel, undersecretary for Veterans Affairs. He said at the time we havent found any evidence of secret lists. We havent found any evidence that people die