Sometimes, change can be a bad thing.

Just ask the drenched students who moved into the dorms Thursday, the Sycamore residents evacuated from Evergreen Village Mobile Home Park and Edgebrook Mobile Homes on Friday morning, or others in the area who were left without electricity.

Having spent my entire life in the Midwest, I’m no stranger to flooding. My hometown, Rockford, experienced flooding in early August, less than a year after another major flood. My parents spent several weekends pulling up carpet in our basement and trying to dry everything out.

We were luckier than others. After the second flood, other Rockford families’ homes were condemned because of the damage.

I had hoped that, after seeing people evacuated from their homes rushing with their possessions in laundry baskets, garbage bags, anything they could find, this would be the last flood for a while.

Now DeKalb County residents face the same problems. This is when another change would have been welcome.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich cut nearly $500 million in spending projects from the Illinois budget Thursday, saying he wanted to reduce the amount spent on needless, or “pork,” projects.

The problem is, some of those projects actually benefit voters.

Part of the money Blagojevich vetoed was earmarked for relief efforts in areas hit by previous flooding.

There is a certain point when towns must look to the state and nation for help. It is impossible to predict certain disasters, and just as impossible to always keep relief funding locally contained.

By broadly classifying some local projects as pork spending, Blagojevich neglects the very people he should represent.

There are families still recovering after the early August flooding.

That denied funding can’t be very encouraging for DeKalb County residents dealing with the after-effects of last week’s flood. Because Blagojevich has declared DeKalb a disaster area, there is the possibility of federal aid – as long as other politicians have a different definition of “pork.”

At a time such as this, water-logged DeKalb could use a good kind of change.