From: ADA Watch
JimWard@ADAwatch.org

March 15, 2005 Joanne Wilson -- one of the highest-ranking Bush administration officials with a disability -- resigned as head of the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) and is now protesting Bush Administration policies that she says "could set people with disabilities back 50 years."

President Bush issued his budget proposal on February 7. The head of the largest federal job-training program for people with disabilities quit on February 8.

Joanne Wilson -- head of the $2.7 billion-a-year Rehabilitation Services Administration at the Education Department -- left quietly. She sent out a standard-issue "the-time-has-come" resignation letter, wrapped up loose ends at the office, and packed her things to move back to Louisiana. Among advocates for the disabled, rumors percolated that Wilson had resigned in protest, but she kept her mouth shut until after her resignation became official on March 1.

In her first interview since resigning, Wilson told National Journal on March 8: "The administration made a decision on the direction that the RSA was going to go and, in my heart, I could not follow the administration's lead." Wilson, who is blind and who was one of the highest-ranking administration officials with a disability, said, "This direction could set people with disabilities back 50 years."

Wilson's resignation comes as advocates for the disabled decry the Bush administration's plans for the RSA, which helps over 213,000 people a year get jobs. In its 2006 budget, the administration proposed allowing governors to merge the RSA's services with eight other federally funded job-training programs. In addition, the Education Department is planning to close the RSA's regional offices, halve the agency's 120-person workforce, and demote the RSA commissioner's job from one that needs Senate confirmation. "I think all of these are pieces of the puzzle," Wilson said. "It is a move to diminish the role of rehabilitation and the RSA in this country."

Bush administration officials say people with disabilities would be better served by a more integrated job system. "It is unfortunate that some vocational-rehabilitation stakeholders are concerned about maintaining a separate system, a separate infrastructure, and separate staff -- as opposed to looking at the issue of employment outcomes for the clients and customers of the system," said Assistant Secretary of Labor Emily Stover DeRocco.