August 18, 2008

Budget Update

With the Legislature coming back tomorrow, there is much behind the scenes negotiations going on between the leadership. We will hopefully have a better sense later today regarding the impact of the cuts. Rumors are rampant about where cuts will occur. Discussion also continues on property tax relief and the Assembly’s proposed millionaire’s tax. Our goal continues to be to fight any cuts to community mental health services as well as proposed cuts to new initiatives and member items that impact mental health services such as health care enhancements, veteran’s mental health and adult home advocacy. We also continue our call for the continued carve out of anti-depressants in the Preferred Drug List.

We will keep you posted as to how things play out over the next few days. Please continue to your proactive work in calling your legislators and letting them know that there should not be any cuts to mental health services.

Articles about Impact of Mental Health Budget Cuts

N.Y. Budget Crisis Forces Governor To Call Emergency Session
August 18, 2008; Mental Health Weekly

Governor David A. Paterson last week called on state lawmakers to make $600 million in 2008-2009 reductions. He also imposed a hiring freeze and cut state agency spending by an additional $630 million in order to address a potential shortfall in the current fiscal year, according to a press statement.

Although New York legislature ended its session in June, Governor Patterson has asked legislators to return for a special emergency session of the legislature on August 19.

New York mental health advocates have expressed disappointment over the governor’s proposed state budget announcement, which they contend would cut funding for mental health services and program for individuals with psychiatric disabilities.

Advocates say the items proposed for cuts by the governor are several million dollars in mental health funding. Included in his proposal is a 6 percent cut to local assistance programs for consumers of mental illness. Paterson’s proposal also includes cuts that he said would control state Medicaid spending.

Among the programs slated to be cut if the budget is approved are clubhouse programs, case management services, children’s mental health services and suicide prevention programs, said Glenn Liebman, chief executive of the Mental Health Association in New York State. “We have sent a letter to the governor urging him not to cut mental health funding,” Liebman told MHW.

The association has also sent a letter to the New York Senate Majority Leader and the Assembly speaker, he said. “Our rationale is several-fold,” said Liebman. “In these unsettling economic times more and more individuals are seeking mental health services. By cutting mental health services you are creating a perfect storm that will greatly impact thousands of New Yorkers who have psychiatric disabilities.”

“What happens now for the people already in community mental health programs? If those programs are cut, less people will be getting services,” said Liebman. Reducing community-based services would undoubtedly shift costs to emergency rooms, the prison systems and other institutionalized care, he said.

At a time when people are dealing with unemployment, bankruptcy, foreclosure and are experiencing increased anxiety or depression as well, he said.

“We’re very concerned,” Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS), told MHW. “We understand this is a tough environment. Many providers around the state are feeling the pinch.”

The governor had previously proposed a 2 percent cut to the state’s local assistance programs. His new budget request last week now includes 6 percent in addition to the previous cut. “If 2 percent is painful, then 6 percent is untenable,” added Rosenthal.

Rosenthal said NYAPRS has asked the governor and lawmakers to balance the cuts with increased revenues. NYAPRS is advocating with state offices and the state legislature to raise the income tax for New Yorkers who earn over $1 million, he said.

The governor’s budget proposal also included a change in the state’s Preferred Drug List, he said. Paterson is proposing to expand the Medicaid

Preferred Drug List to include antidepressants. People in the public mental health system who need mental health medications, such as antidepressants currently have access without having to go through the prior approval process, Rosenthal noted.

Rosenthal said advocates will continue their campaign efforts when lawmakers return on August 19.

A Day of Reckoning for Lawmakers and Taxpayers in Albany
August 17, 2008; Rockland Journal News; Editorial

As well he should, Gov. David Paterson has been sounding the theme for months that your New York state government is spent, broke, busted. The governor's warned that business-as-usual will no longer do, not with a looming, three-year state deficit estimated at more than $26 billion. Paterson has counseled that long-put-off decisions about budget-trimming can no longer wait. He's spreading this gospel from one end of the state to the other, just to make sure that the message reaches not only lawmakers but also their sometimes asleep-at-the-switch bosses. (Hint: They are age 18 and older and populate small booths in November.) So, has all of this poor-mouthing struck a chord? Is the Legislature ready to snap to it? Should non-essential state workers be cowering in the corner? Maybe more to the point, does anyone think that the most powerful Albany lobbyists have taken the summer off and are busy instead watching beach volleyball at the Olympics? So long as everyone agrees there is no gold medal for naivete.

The state Legislature returns to work Tuesday to consider - or not - a wide range of belt-tightening choices put forth by Paterson, who last week told reporters, "There will be some pain. We're recognizing that. We have to address that problem now." He has outlined a $1 billion menu of prospective budget cuts, including slashing more than $500 million from health care; cutting $250 million in aid to local governments; lopping off $132 million for executive and legislative branch pork-barrel projects; and paring $50 million in support for the City University of New York. The aforementioned violence would, of course, cause pain that would be felt here. For example, the Mental Health Association of Rockland would lose $50,000; anti-youth gang initiatives in the Westchester District Attorney's Office would loose $100,000; and the Putnam Hospital Center would see a $250,000 cut.

There isn't a hamlet in New York that would escape the effects of that lineup of cuts, from which Paterson hopes lawmakers would order up some $600 million in savings. With so much red ink staring New York in the face - and no stomach for tax increases - the scaling back needs to match the dire warnings. Last month, during an appearance before the National Press Club in Washington, Paterson said the hard economic realities buffeting New York and the nation "may yet be as challenging to the American population as even the Great Depression." He added: "State governments must cut spending . . . [and] the federal government is going to have to put more into the states . . . before we have what will be a national crisis of bankruptcy." He's made it quite clear that Wall Street's ills and Main Street's could worsen. Lawmakers should need no more convincing.

The arm-twisting ahead

Paterson hasn't proposed cutting a dollar for education in this budget, but his endorsement of a "tax cap" on annual school property tax increases has not escaped the notice of taxpayers and teachers. While the former have embraced the tax cap in opinion polls, the latter have gone ballistic. After the state Senate last week passed the tax cap, 38-20, the powerful New York State United Teachers said it would withhold its endorsement and support for lawmakers who voted for the cap, under which hikes of more than 4 percent, or 120 percent of the inflation rate, whichever is higher, would require super-majority approval by school district voters. NYSUT has long maintained that a tax cap will hurt education, particularly in urban areas. "NYSUT members are property taxpayers, too, and they, too, want relief, but not at the expense of their schools and children," said NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan B. Lubin.

E.J. McMahon, director of the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy, said that the governor's support for the cap "seems to have induced a nervous breakdown" in NYSUT, referring to the union's no-endorsement pledge. A tax-cap proponent, McMahon wrote last week, "The net effect would hardly be draconian. If it had been in effect over the past decade, the cap would have shaved about one percentage point a year off the average growth in total school tax levies." New York has routinely claimed the highest combined state and local tax burdens in the nation. Said Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, head of a state commission that proposed the tax cap: "New York is No. 1 in taxes and in some cases No. 34 in test scores. So something is backwards here."

Others crying uncle

It is against this backdrop that the tax-cap weary state Assembly entertains the Paterson proposal; it is very much enmeshed in the whole range of Albany discussions, horse-trading and arm-twisting over money, competition for which includes Assembly efforts to secure more money to help heat the homes of poor people this winter. The teachers union certainly isn't the only interest group putting up a fuss. The Greater New York Hospital Association and SEIU, a union representing health-care workers, complains that the more than one half-billion dollars in health-care cuts will hurt patient care and the state's health-care infrastructure - another way of saying union jobs. "In just a few short weeks we have gone from suggestions of shared sacrifice to making hospitals and nursing homes into sacrificial lambs," said William Van Slyke, vice president of the Healthcare Association of New York State.

There also is the Mental Health Association of New York State. It notes that "several million dollars" would be lost in state support of local mental-health initiatives - at a time where hard times exacerbate need. "In difficult economic times, more people desperately need mental-health services," association CEO Glenn Liebman said in a message to mental-health care advocates. "To cut services at this time would be devastating to thousands of the most vulnerable New Yorkers." He called on advocates to send that message to lawmakers. Similar missives abound.

Room to cut

Notwithstanding the pain forecast by Paterson, the better-government Citizens Budget Commission contends New York could save $4.7 billion annually by reforming expensive programs, including restructuring Medicaid to target the neediest among us ($1.8 billion annual savings); renegotiating fringe benefits for government employees ($930 million annual savings); eliminating ineffective economic development programs ($826 million annual savings); increasing the employee work week to 40 hours ($227 million annual savings); and eliminating school aid to the wealthiest districts ($389 million annual savings). We know which among those proposals would turn staid Lower Hudson Valley taxpayers into revolutionaries. And, mindful that there are no silver or bronze medals for naivete either, we need not opine on the odds of the other sensible CBC proposals gaining traction in Albany. New York didn't get this fat - and this broke - without lots of people trying.

Yet something has to give. New York spends considerably more than it takes in. New York state government spends more than New York taxpayers can afford. New York's spending has not yet adjusted to meet the hard choices set forth by this upset economy. As the Legislature returns to work this week, taxpayers and voters should make certain that their voices are heard - over the din of so many upset others.