Well, maybe he didn’t. Yet.

Carcieri cut state funding for a program that brings education to kids with cancer. KIDS WITH CANCER. How do you get behind that? Even the most whiny fiscally conservative Rhode Islander would find a way to save a program for KIDS WITH CANCER:

Since 1977, the school at Hasbro Children’s Hospital has provided academics to patients as one of the oldest hospital-based education program of its kind in the country.

For two hours a day, these children are not cancer patients and cystic fibrosis sufferers — they’re just students learning to read and write like their peers, succeeding and sometimes failing.

Thanks to the Providence Journal’s obsessive 24-hour, 7 day a week coverage of the budget crisis, the cuts to the Hasbro Children’s Hospital program were brought to light. Suddenly the governor’s office began scrambling to save the program, claiming that they didn’t know the budget cuts would effect KIDS WITH CANCER:

Meanwhile, state education officials and legislators, whose jobs it is to propose and OK the cuts, acknowledged knowing little about the Hasbro program or why it was being eliminated.

Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal said the governor’s policy staff had discussed the Hasbro program, but he acknowledged that Carcieri was not formally briefed about the proposed cut until The Journal inquiry.

“We have come to understand that this spending reduction might make it difficult for the hospital to sustain this educational program over the long term. That was never the Governor’s intention or the intention of the Department of Education,” he said in an e-mail Wednesday evening.

I’m grateful to see that the state recognizes what a great program this is, and props to the teachers and administrators who make it happen.

I just wonder how many other important programs might be in danger with these budget cuts, now that the Governor’s office has shown their complete incompetence for understanding the budget and how it effects Rhode Islanders.

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