In so many ways, advocating for hold-the-line funding for nonprofit agencies in the 2010 Dane County budget seems like a hopeless mission.

This is a budget where county employees are looking at a 3 percent reduction in their salaries or possibly layoffs. This is a budget where county property taxpayers are looking at higher-than-usual increases - about $38 on the average Madison home, compared to the largest previous increase of $25.68 in 2004.

In the midst of all that, County Executive Kathleen Falk is proposing a 3 percent cut in funding to the wide array of nonprofit social service agencies that are on the front lines of caring for children, the disabled, those among us who are the most fragile.

The quick public reaction to a lot of these agencies often is that poor people ought to just take care of themselves. But that misses the point of who many of these agencies serve.

Community Partnerships, for instance, keeps children with mental illness living in the community rather than in more expensive group homes and hospitals. The Rainbow Project helps children and families cope with trauma and violence in their lives. MARC (Madison Area Rehabilitation Centers) provides employment, day services and personal care for adults with developmental disabilities.

This is not welfare in the traditional sense. This is the community looking at the best ways to put a safety net under the individuals and families who are in the most vulnerable places in life.

Falk and the county supervisors know this and it is wrong to cast them as uncaring or indifferent to the incredible needs that are out there. The elected officials are caught in an incredible vise this year by the financial pressures of a bad economy.

As they work their way through the 2010 budget, there are pressures coming from many directions to change things - to make the tax rate lower or to protect county employees' wages or to spend more on this project or that. That is why it is so vital that a broad cross-section of the public let it be known that an important value for Dane County is caring for its most vulnerable citizens.

Last week, one of the strongest religious voices for those living on the margins of our society was in town. Rev. Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, is a leader in interfaith efforts to fight poverty.

Looking back at the financial upheavals of the last year, Wallis told one small group, "We have a terrific safety net for the richest in this country." The leaders of government considered the giant banks, automakers and insurance companies to be too big to fail.

The safety net for the most fragile in our society is every bit as important as keeping a safety net under the wealthiest citizens. No one working at MARC or the Rainbow Project is going to get a million-dollar bonus. But they do need to get enough basic sustenance to continue the incredibly valuable work they do.

They are not "too big to fail." Rather, they are too important to sustaining a humane society to fail.

Phil Haslanger is pastor at Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg. phaslanger@gmail.com

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