OGEMAW COUNTY — Although Walt Kaniszewski, the county’s branch director of the Michigan Department of Human Services, expects the department to make it through the 2010 fiscal year, he warns there will likely be tough times in 2011.

Kaniszewski said he expects that for the 2011 fiscal year, there will be a 20 percent budget cut in the state DHS budget, meaning a total of 30 percent in budget cuts spanning a two-year period. He said there would be a number of staff members and programs affected by the cuts.

He said the department was able to resolve its budget issues for 2010 with some help from federal stimulus money, but he said the state’s financial situation “will have some serious ramifications for 2011.” He added that it would be up to the newly elected state legislature and governor on how to handle those issues.

“The good news is that we’ve pretty much hit bottom,” Kaniszewski said. “Some forecasters are saying that come May or June, people will be getting back to work a little at a time. Michigan will never be where we were. We were so dependent on the auto industry. They’re going to have to develop an infrastructure based on alternative energy. I think that will be a long process.”

On Oct. 29, 2009, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed the fiscal year 2010 DHS budget bill, Kaniszewski said. That budget totaled $5.9 billion, of which $852.3 million is in general funds. The state funding is a one-third reduction from the original FY 2009 budget bill, he said.

Regarding the cuts she signed off on, Granholm said funding for several DHS programs was “drastically reduced” from her original recommendations.

“Programs supported by the state’s general fund, including local office field staffing, child welfare improvements, child day care, juvenile justice, and employment and training programs have all been drastically reduced from my executive recommendation to meet legislatively-negotiated targets with which I do not agree,” she said.

Kaniszewski said that the irony of the state’s economic situation is that more of the state’s citizens are in need of services that the DHS provides, even though the department has less funding to work with.

He provided a list that showed the number of cases the DHS has handled has nearly doubled since 2002, when it had a total of 1,180,716 cases. In 2009, it handled a total of 2,326,964 cases. Meanwhile, the total number of staff members on board for the DHS has declined from 3,685 in 2002 to 3,293 in 2009.

As a result, caseworkers are experiencing a greater workload than in the past. In 2002, the number of cases per worker in 2002 was 320, while in 2009 that number was 707.

Kaniszewski said the department is being overwhelmed by the number of people that are applying for assistance.

“They can never get caught up,” he said. “We have some of the most dedicated workers I know. I’m very proud of them.”

In particular, he said the department has received a greater number of requests for heating assistance, with what he described as the “astronomical” heating costs the people deal with today. He said his office, in the past, received three or four requests for assistance per day from people dealing with shutoff notices.

Today, he said the number has skyrocketed to 20 to 30 such requests per day.

Kaniszewski said the current situation is common knowledge at the Ogemaw office, and said the staff is doing the best they can, given the circumstances they work with.

“It hasn’t come easy, especially when caseloads are spiraling,” he said. “They’re not used to being behind. You can only do so much in a day. I hear them complain about their inability to get their work done, and that they can’t help people like they want to. That’s where their frustration is. I feel fortunate to have a quality staff on board.”