[NYAPRS Enews] Update: Albany Approves Mental Hygiene Budget

[Harvey Rosenthal]

NYAPRS Note: In approving the Administration's latest budget extender
yesterday, the NYS Legislature authorized release of state funds to
maintain local community mental health safety services across the state.
Yesterday's extender included full year funding for mental hygiene
services and thankfully did not provide across the board cuts to the
safety net. It did slow residential development somewhat and provided a
cut to Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) programs, although
the latter cut is not expected to delay counties and agencies that are
already in the process of PROS conversions. 

 

While the good news is that the Legislature has authorized the release
of mental health funds, getting those funds to community providers will
be another challenge altogether. It'll take weeks for money to travel
the sometimes treacherous routes from Albany to county mental health
departments to community agencies. Moreover, it appears that the state's
difficult cash flow position may mean that providers won't get full
quarterly payments from Albany but a series of more frequent partial
payments, possibly monthly rather than every 3 months as has been the
norm. NYAPRS and our colleagues will be following this very closely. 

 

While the budget itself only extends the exemption from onerous
licensing changes for social workers and mental health workers to next
year, there's apparently been an agreement to ultimately extend it 3
years and legislation doing just that is moving rapidly through the
Legislature. Thanks to all our colleagues and OMH officials who've
worked so long and hard on this issue. 

 

Yesterday's budget deal also included a proposal bolstering the
authority of OMH, OMRDD and OASAS facility directors to charge people
living in state operated facilities for the cost of 'care and
treatment.' NYAPRS and legal rights groups had opposed this measure,
especially for its capacity to limit the amount of SSI funds longer term
inpatients could accrue and use to foster a more successful return to
the community. In the final agreement, Mental Hygiene Legal Services
will be playing a legislatively authorized oversight role and OMH will
be encouraged to expand its role in helping such individuals to put
funds in special needs trusts. This measure will expire and have to be
reviewed in 4 years. We'll have more on this later....

 

State's Emergency Spending Bill OK'd By Senate, 34-27

by Tom Precious   Buffalo News  June 14, 2010

 

With just hours to go before a threatened shutdown of state government,
three Senate Republicans broke with their colleagues Monday to join
Democrats in approving an emergency spending bill to keep agencies open
and funding available for everything from nonprofit programs to
unemployment checks.

 

The game of chicken, however, could be repeated in just one week unless
talks to resolve the much-delayed state budget for the current year gain
more steam in coming days.....

 

Passage of the $14 billion emergency spending bill averted the state
government shutdown, which Gov. David A. Paterson had warned would have
begun this morning. The measure largely covers human services and mental
health programs.....

 

The measure was the 11th weekly emergency spending bill since the
state's fiscal year began April 1 without a annual budget. In all, those
weekly bills already have included nearly $80 billion in spending for
the current year - almost 60 percent of what officials believe will be a
final budget amount of about $135 billion.

 

Senate Democrats say the emergency bills have closed $1.1 billion of the
$9.2 billion spending gap, meaning an increasingly shrinking portion of
the budget will have to deal with the remaining red ink....

 

The new bill saves about $325 million in various mental health and human
services programs. But it also will be expensive for local governments,
mainly counties, because of what Senate Democratic aides described as
about $100 million in various cost-shifts from the state to localities,
such as payments for juvenile justice programs. That, Republicans say,
will hit property taxpayers and local services.....

 

Legislative leaders insist a broader deal is close. , but Paterson told
a handful of reporters in his office Sunday night that the sides are
"very far" apart, and that lawmakers are boasting of progress to put
pressure on him to propose emergency bills that are easier to pass.

 

Legislators cannot change the governor's emergency measures; they can
only vote them up or down.

 

If legislators fail to approve the emergency bills - which they cannot
amend - the state cannot spend money.

 

"We are moving closer and closer on an overall budget plan," said
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver after emerging from a private meeting
with Paterson and Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson.
Still, he said the sides were at least $1.3 billion apart in closing the
$9.2 billion gap -- a difference Paterson has put more at $2 billion
apart....

 

http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/06/14/1081503/shutdown-in-albany-is-not-
seen.html 

 

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