Left out in the cold

Just about four years ago this week, I sat with Mitt Romney in the study of his palatial Belmont house, as the governor-elect explained to me that at the end of his term, he wanted to be viewed not as a budget slasher, but as someone who cared. He took pains to mention the state's homeless as a population he would never harm.

Let's go right to the tape. "I ran for office and want to be governor because I want to do a better job for people who need government's help," he said.

Romney again: "If I'm seen only as the mastermind of cuts, it will be very hard to say, 'Here's a guy who cares.' I will look to cut without cutting people at the edge."

One more time: "Saying it doesn't mean anything. People will see it and believe it -- or not. The proof will be in the pudding."

It ends up, four years and one term later, that's some mushy pudding. Last week, the good governor ceremoniously slashed $425 million out of the state budget, a significant portion of it undoubtedly destined for silly pet projects that would have done very little good, benefiting very few people.

But his machete also caught $410,000 in the Department of Transitional Assistance, better known as public welfare, specifically meant to fund about 333 additional beds for homeless people in the cold winter months.

Because of Romney's actions, those beds are now gone. They won't exist. The men and women who were meant to sleep in them will be destined to roam the streets on even the most frigid nights, sleeping on park benches, gathering warmth under bridges or over subway grates, subsisting on the frozen garbage they ferret out of the trash.

So, is Mitt Romney, as he once said to me, "a guy who cares?" I asked that question of Lyndia Downie, the president of the Pine Street Inn, the largest homeless shelter in Boston.

Understand, Downie isn't one of the flame-throwing liberals who have criticized everything Romney's done. Quite the opposite. When he was elected, she worked on his transition team. She's barely had a complaint about his tenure. Her shelter wouldn't even directly receive any of the money that was cut.

"The governor said he wouldn't cut homeless money," Downie said. "I had high hopes. He made a commitment. I thought he was going to think of things differently."

But now, she added, "He's completely, with this decision, gone against that."

It's not just the money, Downie said. In many ways, the timing of the cuts is even more vicious, coming as they do on the eve of the winter.

"This is a problem next week," Downie said. "It feels like it came out of left field. If we had known a couple of months ago, we could have done something.

"The fact was, he made a commitment not to touch homeless services."

Downie said that the shelters in Dorchester and downtown Boston would be short of beds because of the cuts and that homeless men unable to sleep there would come to the Pine Street Inn in search of warmth.

"When someone shows up at our door and it's midnight and it's 10 degrees, we need to respond, and that's what he's basically taking away," she said.

My colleague Eileen McNamara pointed out this week that Romney also slashed $28 million marked for modest raises to dismally paid social workers.

Every Democrat on Beacon Hill seems to think the governor is playing politics with this entire batch of cuts, trying to project an aura of rigid fiscal discipline on a national stage.

That may or may not be true, but I have a hard time believing the guy would so blatantly go back on his word.

I have a hard time believing he even knows these homeless funds were cut. Once he learns, I think he'll put them back.

Either I'm a fool, or our governor is a fraud.

It would be nice if he corrected this mistake sometime today.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.