By Dave Ranney, KHI News Service, June 05, 2008
TOPEKA, June 5 — Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services Secretary Don Jordan has seen the future. It’s not bright.
“Basically, the state is spending $401 million more than it’s bringing in,” Jordan said Wednesday, addressing a meeting of stakeholders — advocates, program directors and consumers — at the SRS Learning Center here.
Jordan warned the audience that it would be “naïve” to think projected revenue shortfalls won’t affect the department’s budget for fiscal year 2010.
“In May, the state brought in $51 million less than it had anticipated in April,” he said. “We’re real anxious to see what happens in June because if that trend keeps going, it’s going to have some real serious consequences for programs all across the state.”
Some stakeholders challenged Jordan’s assumption that cuts in social-service spending are likely unavoidable.
“It’s just as naïve on the part of policymakers to assume that somehow people are not going to be harmed by this,” said Tom Laing, executive director at Interhab, an association representing most of the state’s community based programs for the developmentally disabled.
“Policymakers have got to open their eyes to the crisis that’s right in front of them,” Laing said afterward. “It’s behavior like we’re seeing now that caused the schools to sue the state a few years back. They can’t keep sitting back and saying ‘My God, how did happen?’ They’ve got to resolve that it won’t happen.”
Laing said he and others in the social service arena are tired of being told there’s no new money when, at the same time, legislators have been quick in approving tax cuts.
“We just got through giving away an $87 million (tax break) that wasn’t even asked for,” Laing said, referring to legislators deciding not to “decouple” the state from the recently enacted federal economic stimulus package.
“In the eight years preceding the (Gov. Kathleen) Sebelius administration, the state gave away somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion,” in tax cuts, Laing said. “There have been fewer giveaways since then, but there have been some. The issue isn’t ‘there’s no money.’ The money is there.”
Jordan said he and his staff were aware of the challenges.
“This is really a matter of making tough choices,” he said, noting that more than three-fourths of the state’s budget is driven by mandated expenditures.
Jordan said SRS was fortunate to get through this year’s legislative session with:
• $6 million of the $9 million it needed to restore federal funding for child abuse investigations.
• $7 million to offset community mental health centers’ costs of caring for the uninsured. The centers had asked for $15.8 million.
• $15.3 million to cover caseload growth — $2.8 million in fiscal 2008, $12.5 million in fiscal 2009.
• $200,000 for intervention services for an additional 20 autistic children, ages 0 to 5. The Kansas Autism Task Force had asked for $1.1 million for an additional 75 children.
• $1.9 million for in-home services designed to allow people with traumatic brain injuries, physical disabilities or developmental disabilities to live in community rather than institutional settings.
“There will not be waiting lists for the physically disabled or for the traumatic brain injured for another year,” Jordan said.
The $1.9 million includes almost $350,000 for serving an additional 22 people with developmental disabilities.
That’s hardly enough, Laing said: “Moving 22 persons off a waiting list of close to 3,000 people — that represents a movement of less than one percent.”
He also discounted the significance of legislators approving a 2 percent rate increase for programs for people with disabilities.
“That’s not nearly enough to affect the spiking costs that every organization represented in this room is facing — the increasing costs of health insurance, transportation, utilities and on and on,” Laing said. “Two percent doesn’t cut it.”
Many programs, Laing said, will use the rate increase to raise their workers’ wages — but not by much.
“A 2 percent raise in a community-based program’s worker’s daily wage won’t be enough to buy a half-gallon a gasoline (a day),” he said.
Laing chided legislators for leaving almost 100 autistic children on a waiting list for services, noting that without early intervention services each child’s disability is sure to increase in severity.
“That’s the most Catch-22 outcome of our policies that we’ve had in a long time,” he said.
Others in the audience raised similar concerns on behalf of the mentally ill, low-income families, and children in foster care.
About 70 people attended the Topeka session. Others listened via speakerphone from SRS offices throughout the state.
Jordan promised to include the advocates in the department’s budget-setting procedures for fiscal 2010. The process, he said, would be “open, transparent and communicative.”
He reminded the group that SRS and the Department on Aging will be hosting a June 26 forum on Medicaid-funded home and community based services, starting at 2 p.m. at the SRS Learning Center, 2600 SW East Circle Drive, Topeka.
SRS officials plan to forward the agency’s proposed budget for fiscal 2010 to the governor’s office on Sept. 15.
SRS expects to spend $1.6 billion — $676.5 million from the State General Fund — in fiscal 2009, representing a 2 percent increase over fiscal 2008 spending.
Fiscal 2009 begins July 1.
-Dave Ranney is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at dranney@khi.org or at 785-233-5443, ext. 128.