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Finding solutions that work
(by Rebecca S. Rivas - May 06, 2008)
The city is not a battleground for people with disabilities, said David Newburger, a lawyer and Central West End resident.
And his job as commissioner on the disabled — the mayor’s advisor on disability rights’ issues — is not that of an army general.
In the position since April 1, Newburger’s job is to fight for the rights of disabled people within a framework built around conflict.
The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination on employment, housing, public services and telecommunications, is built upon the premise that those who are denied their rights have the right to sue to obtain them.
But Newburger offers a different perspective on political change.
“My office is not about conflict,” he said. “We are focused on finding solutions that work. I am a litigator, and sometimes we have to litigate. But a lot of progress can be made by evolution, negotiation and education.”
He said his first task is to educate the mayor and city administrators on disability issues. It will take a good deal of time and planning, he said, but various offices already seem receptive to his suggestions.
Newburger is well known in City Hall as the chairman of the Tax Increment Financing Commission, which oversees TIFs, a common form of tax incentives used by aldermen and developers throughout the city.
Newburger’s position as commissioner on the disabled differs from that of his predecessor, Deborah Dee, who served as a full-time commissioner for 30 years. The mayor has allowed Newburger to work part time, so he can continue his personal law practice at the Newburger & Vossmeyer law firm and his work with the Starkloff Institute, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the community welcome people with disabilities.
“The mayor asked if I wanted to be commissioner, but I didn’t want to give up everything I was doing,” he said. “I didn’t want just to become a city bureaucrat.”
Newburger said St. Louis city falls behind other Midwestern cities, including Madison, Wis., Chicago and Milwaukee, in becoming a place where the disabled can live independently. And closer to home, many municipalities within St. Louis County are “just not tuned in,” he said.
“There are courthouses that have large accessibility issues,” he said, “and that’s indicative that the whole county has problems.”
Widely differing needs
People with disabilities make up 18 percent of the U.S. population, or 52 million people. It would seem that having that many people with a common interest would make it easier to gain support for disability rights and policies. But, Newburger said, unifying the community is one of the biggest challenges in the disability-rights movement.
People with disabilities have differing needs, and many of them don’t think — or don’t want to think — that they are disabled. Newburger admits that he didn’t consider himself disabled until he moved to St. Louis in 1972.
Before then, he had lived his whole life in Ohio, and there were several family friends who were disabled and had successful careers. Newburger contracted polio when he was 11 months old, and it paralyzed him from the waist down. Former president Franklin Roosevelt helped decrease the stigma of those crippled by polio. As a result, Newburger said, “With polio, we were integrated into society.”
When Newburger was a boy, his parents did the best thing they could have done for him. They enrolled him in the public school system rather than keeping him in a school for “crippled children,” where he had studied for a year.
“Their wisdom allowed me to be part of the general population,” he said. “I grew up in a bubble. I never thought that I couldn’t do what I wanted.”
Newburger and his wife, Toby, met in Oberlin College in Ohio, where he graduated with a political science degree.
Just like a typical, good liberal-arts student in those times, he said he went to law school after he graduated in 1965. For Newburger, the law school was Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. While he was there, the civil rights movement was at its peak, and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke five times at the college, including at his graduation.
He learned a lot during the civil rights movement, but the social-justice bug didn’t really get under his skin until he arrived in Missouri.
‘The right to human dignity’
When he relocated to St. Louis to become a law professor at Washington University, he “started running into people who couldn’t be part of the community,” he said.
He met Max Starkloff, who had lived in a nursing home for 12 years before raising enough money to live on his own and start the not-for-profit center for independent living called Paraquad.
“Working with Max, I learned the number of people who didn’t have the benefits that I had,” he said.
Paraquad helps people learn to live independently by offering programs such as a personal-care service, and career and technology training. In 1981, Starkloff asked Newburger to be a board member for the organization, which was just the push Newburger needed to become fully involved in the disability-rights movement.
“When he found out the need there was for good, professional leaders, he completely committed himself to the disability-rights movement,” Starkloff said.
Starkloff recently stepped down as the director of Paraquad, which now has 90 employees, to start another project — the Starkloff Institute.
Working with Starkloff was Newburger’s first advocacy work in the disabilities-rights movement. Now he is one of the founders of the Starkloff Institute, which he calls the next step in Paraquad’s mission.
At the Starkloff Institute, helping people who are disabled means something quite different than what many people first think.
“They think that you’re going to help solve the needs of people with disabilities through medical research … or pushing somebody around in a wheelchair,” Newburger said.
“What we think of is to allow people to be in charge of their own lives,” he said. “Human dignity — that’s what this whole thing is about. Everybody has the right to human dignity.”
Paternalistic atttitudes
Newburger argues that federal and state health-care policies promote dependency on certain kinds of services rather than enabling people to make their own decisions.
Currently, many people with disabilities make their health-care decisions based on what’s covered under Medicaid. But the Medicaid program is biased toward reimbursing institutional-care services rather than home services.
In 1999, long-term-care institutions received $25.9 billion in Medicaid funding, compared to $622 million in Medicaid funds for home- and community-based services.
“We have a major need for revising the way money is spent on Medicaid so people can live independently,” he said. “We want the money to follow the person.”
What that means is that the Medicare funds available to support people in nursing homes should follow them out of the home and provide services that allow them to live independently. However, that’s not the case currently, Newburger said.
In order to receive health-care services, many people quit their jobs in order to fall below the Social Security Administration’s limit on wages earned.
In 1990, when the American Disabilities Act passed, about 70 percent of people with disabilities were unemployed. Eighteen years later, that number has barely moved; it’s currently sitting at 68 percent.
“People still can’t work,” Starkloff said. “We come from a paternalistic attitude that believes we have to be taken care of. We can make decisions for ourselves just as well as anyone. We need support, but we don’t need to be cared for.”
Even with the SSA’s temporary work-incentive programs, a person cannot make more than $11,280 a year, which is significantly below the yearly cost of home health services.
“We pay a lot of people not to work,” Newburger said. “Many people could lead fuller lives, but the programs are based upon people not being successful.”
Life as an independent professional
At his kitchen table, which Newburger calls his office space, sits a laptop open and ready, as well as a constantly ringing cell phone. His wife sometimes plays the piano, near their eighth-floor window that looks out over Forest Park, while he works.
Newburger has led a successful life as a lawyer, not, he said, by making big breakthroughs, but by helping other’s lives be more fulfilled.
Newburger is also a regular Metro customer. He rides his scooter to the Central West End MetroLink stop and takes the train downtown to his law practice and to City Hall.
He sees some serious problems with the Metro’s transit program for people with disabilities called Call-A-Ride.
Those with disabilities typically can’t drive, he said, and he’s concerned that Metro is having financial difficulties and looking to reduce services.
Currently, Call-A-Ride is a “to the curb” service. However, not every person can put on a coat and make it out the door unassisted.
“Some of the choices that have been made with Call-A-Ride aren’t good choices,” he said. “With the new administration of Metro, we’re going to work out solutions.”
Starkloff said a more immediate problem is that not all the bus stops are accessible to people in wheelchairs. When a bus picks up a passenger, the driver lowers the ramp to the curb. However many sidewalks don’t extend to the curb, and getting to the street from the bus stop is difficult.
Perhaps fewer people would rely on the Call-A-Ride service if they could access the regular bus stops, Starkloff said.
To date, the city’s office on the disabled has not made much effort to be proactive in issues such as transportation and parking, or in educating city officials on what the needs are, Starkloff said.
“Knowing David, things will happen,” Starkloff said. “I can’t imagine a better person than David in this position.”
The fact that the mayor would pick someone so capable makes a statement that the city is dedicated to addressing these issues, he said.
Newburger believes that with the right support, St. Louis could replicate the work that cities in New York and California have done.
“I always tell people, ‘Go find a fad on the coasts and do it in Missouri,” Newburger said. “Find the best practice and bring it home.”
“It’s not my job to solve the problems of every person with disabilities,” he said. “It’s my job to help the whole city to solve the problem of every person with disabilities.”
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