Both can happen in tandem. A good example of why putting documentation before helping people is the April 29th tragedy where 2 people lost their lives and they 300k people in Allegheny County lost power. What was the tragedy? Lack of infrastructure and a lot of wind.

The aftermath left a lot of people without power for a week. That meant in neighborhoods like Braddock, a lack of access to food and water meant that we had to call the Red Cross. We (myself my mother, and the VP of council) drove around delivering food from the Red Cross. No electricity meant that some people couldn’t take hot showers, as some hot water tanks are electric.

When we had the opportunity to speak with PA’s Emergency Administration (PEMA), they admitted to being clueless that Allegheny County even needed help. Sitting there staring blankly at the person from PEMA, I was in awe. Does anyone watch the news? How could a state be a state but so incompetent and far away? PEMA insisted on the upcoming budget cuts that Municipalities document the work that they’re doing in emergencies before they do work in emergencies. PEMA also suggested that a room full of small municipalities include generators in their municipal budgets. When Representative Abigail Salisbury mentioned that she was going out of her way to provide generators for senior citizen housing places, PEMA told her she shouldn’t have been doing such things without documenting it first. I’m not certain that the seniors needing fridges for their meds or oxygen tanks cared about the paperwork.

This brings me to the thought of how Medicaid and SNAP were cut in the recent federal budget bill. The people who will stay on the programs will deal with a myriad of paperwork issues that states can’t handle, and I’m certain that’s why the government created these hurdles. It also makes me think about how organizations want to go out and help people, but love to take the route with the most documentation. Death by Documentation seems to hinder so much progress in many aspects of government, policy, and human services.