[NYAPRS Enews] NYNP: State Budget Deal Satisfies Low Expectations

[Harvey Rosenthal]

State Budget Deal Satisfies Low Expectations

New York Nonprofit Press   March 28, 2012

 

It is a sign of the times!  Human service providers and advocates appear
to be viewing preliminary details of a State budget agreement that
provides no across-the-board increases in funding to meet rising costs -
but few new spending cuts - as relatively positive.  It is, they say, as
good as they could expect given the State's overall fiscal situation.
And, providers praise a broad range of individual funding restorations
in the final budget deal as well as several key new programmatic
initiatives, including the "Close to Home" juvenile justice reform and
the new $60 million MRT Supportive Housing Development to serve high
cost Medicaid recipients.

 

"While we enjoyed some important restorations to human services for
FY13, we have to put this in context of the nearly one billion in direct
service cuts and an estimated 27,000 jobs lost in the last two years,"
said Chris Winward, Director of Budget and Policy at Human Services
Council of New York.  Winward noted that new investments in business
development and restorations in education saw about a billion dollars of
funding added to the final budget, while human service programs
adjustments totaled only $150 million.

 

"Given the circumstances, this is not a bad budget," says Phillip
Saperia, Executive Director of the Coalition of Behavioral Health
Agencies.  "It didn't go as far as we wanted, but we avoided having
massive direct cuts."

 

"We are relieved that the enacted state budget does not contain the
devastating 10 billion dollars in cuts that last year's budget did,"
says Fatima Goldman, Executive Director & CEO of the Federation of
Protestant Welfare Agencies.  "Nevertheless, funding for many low-income
youth services which were cut by 50% last year as well as some programs
for the elderly which were also cut, have not been restored.  This is of
immense concern given that the Great Recession forced an additional
120,000 New Yorkers into poverty and the city's poverty rate up to
20.1%."

 

"In light of current economic conditions, this budget is not as bad as
it could have been," says Peter Pierri,  Executive Director of the
Interagency Council of Developmental Disabilities Agencies.  "It is much
better than last year."

 

COLAs

Although the budget does not include Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs)
for nonprofit service providers this year, advocates were able to fend
off efforts to permanently eliminate COLA provisions in future budgets.
Governor Cuomo had proposed moving to a yet-to-be determined system of
"performance-based" funding adjustments in place of automatic COLAs.
Instead, the final deal calls for another "deferral" of the multi-year
COLA package, thus leaving the basic COLA framework in place for the
future.  "We are very pleased that our advocacy to protect the human
services COLA by deferring it rather than eliminating it, and without
performance standard language, paid off," said HSC's Windward.

 

Executive Comp & Admin Caps

Providers were less enthusiastic about the Budget's failure to reject
Governor Andrew Cuomo's Executive Order language capping state funding
for executive compensation above  $199,000 and limiting State
expenditures for administrative overhead to 25% of total spending...
declining to 15% over the next three years.    Now, all eyes are focused
on regulations being developed by individual state agencies to implement
the Executive Order. 

Supportive Housing

Advocates cited creation of the new MRT Supportive Housing Development
Program as a major step forward.

"The establishment of the MRT Supportive Housing Development Program
demonstrates the depth of this Governor's commitment to New York's most
vulnerable people," said Ted Houghton, Executive Director of the
Supportive Housing Network of New York. "The Governor's initiative will
allow thousands of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities to
move into supportive housing, which will greatly reduce their reliance
on expensive emergency rooms, hospitalization and institutional care.
Not only will they have a better quality of life, but we'll be saving
taxpayer dollars, too.

"The program will accomplish two goals," Houghton continued.  "It will
enable nonprofit providers to house and serve approximately one thousand
high-cost recipients of Medicaid services in new scattered site
supportive housing units this year; and it will accelerate capital
development under the New York/New York III Supportive Housing
Agreement, leveraging millions more in public and private capital
investment.  And this is only the beginning -- the budget contains
explicit community reinvestment language that will use future savings
from nursing home and hospital bed closures to create additional new
housing and service opportunities to allow people with chronic illnesses
and disabilities to live in the community."

"This is really big," says Phillip Saperia.  "We're very happy about
this."

 

Restorations

HSC reports that other human service restorations included work supports
and employment training for struggling New Yorkers, $14 million for a
number of child care programs (in addition to the $93 million in funding
the Governor submitted to offset the loss of federal dollars), $250,000
for English as a Second Language/Adult Basic Education, $1.5 million for
the NYS Supportive Housing Program, and $3 million for the Advanced
Technology Training & Info Networking (ATTAIN) and $750,000 for the
Career Pathways TANF initiatives. Restorations were also made to
services for survivors of domestic violence with $1.2 million for
Non-Residential Domestic Violence and $1 million for the Safe Harbor
program, which serves victims of child sex trafficking.

"We are pleased with agreement of the final budget especially retaining
the statutory 65% formula for preventive services, approval of the Close
to Home juvenile justice reform, and  the restorations for Safe Harbor,
Community Reinvestment, and the Settlement Houses," says Jim Purcell,
CEO of the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies (COFCCA). "Of
course with no funding for the increases in the cost of living for
things like gas, Health insurance, food, etc we will all be looking for
meaningful mandate relief from the state agencies."

"UNH is of course gratified to see a $1.45 million restoration of
funding for settlement houses statewide, and we thank Speaker Silver for
recognizing the importance of this ongoing support," says Nancy
Wackstein, Executive Director of United Neighborhood Houses.  "We were
pleased to see additional funding for NORCs (naturally occurring
retirement communities) as well.  We still are trying to understand the
youth funding picture.  It is not clear yet how much additional youth
funding will come to New York City, but we certainly need every bit we
can get!"

 

Mental Health Services

"We're generally pleased with the outcome of this year's budget
negotiations, especially as regards the renewed commitment to reinvest
savings from state hospital bed reductions to boost community recovery
services, the creation of the supportive housing reinvestment fund, the
provision to mainstream public education for children in state
psychiatric facilities, the funding of $3 million more in managed care
enrollment brokers and the modified restoration of prescriber prevails
protections within Medicaid managed care plans," said  Harvey Rosenthal,
Executive Director, New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Services. "We must now turn our attention to trying to help shape the
way the state integrates behavioral and medical healthcare in the
integrated managed design to come and the pending proposal to "pay for
performance" we are anticipating for next year."

 

Employment & Public Assistance

"New York's unemployment and underemployment rates have not come down
very much because of the slow economic recovery.  For this reason we are
very disappointed that jobs programs and job training programs for the
poor and unemployed were not restored to their 2009-10 levels," stated
Bich Ha Pham, Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at FPWA.
"However, the enacted budget does keep its promise to the poorest by
restoring the final 10% planned increase for the public assistance
grant.  An average family of three in New York City will see an increase
of about a dollar a day."

 

Early Intervention

A proposal which would have required that Early Intervention providers
negotiate reimbursement rates with third-party insurers reportedly has
been rejected.  Instead, providers will now be able to continue
receiving the full state approved rate as reimbursement.  "This would
have been extremely detrimental for providers' ability to survive," says
IAC's Peter Pierri.

 

Seniors

The Council of Senior Centers and Services (CSCS) praised what they
called "a tremendous victor for seniors".  "EPIC coverage has been
restored before and after the coverage gap called the 'donut hole' with
a maximum copayment of $20," says Bobbie Sackman, Director of Public
Policy for CSCS.  "Coverage during the donut hole will continue as is
currently the case.  The entire cut to EPIC was not restored so seniors
will still have to pay the Medicare Part D deductible."

 

No Revenue Reform
At the same time, however, advocates bemoaned the budget's failure to
include any revenue reforms in terms of closing tax loopholes.  In a
rally this morning, representatives of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness,
Strong Economy for All Coalition, Fiscal Policy Institute,
Labor-Religion Coalition of NYS, Human Services Council, Citizen Action,
New York Students Rising, PSC-CUNY, Alliance for Quality Education,
Statewide Senior Action, UnitedNY, the New York State United Teachers
said the about-to-be-passed New York State budget falls short when
viewed from the perspective of regular New Yorkers.

"Lawmakers continue to shower Wall Street and big business with over a
billion dollars worth of tax loopholes and special subsidies," said
Michael Kink of the Strong Economy For All Coalition.  "We don't need to
be subsidizing Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - they're doing fine on
their own.  But we should be doing more for students, for local
community human services, and for small businesses that are still stuck
in the recession."

"It seems our budget once again ignores the neediest of our citizens in
New York State.  While the Governor and Legislature agreed to allow the
scheduled increase in the public assistance grant to be enacted they
have virtually ignored the soaring homelessness, hunger and poverty that
is pervasive in our state," said Ron Deutsch of New Yorkers for Fiscal
Fairness.

 

http://www.nynp.biz/index.php/e-newsletter-archives/9730-wednesday-march
-28-2012

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