We are very pleased to see the Legislature and Governor support a 2.7% TII in this year’s final executive budget. We are also pleased to see that the final language is flexible, leaving it to the discretion of the community agency as to how the increase is spent.
2.7% represents the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for this year, and advocates supported the CPI in all our advocacy efforts.
Originally, the Governor added 1.7% in the proposed Executive Budget, and the Legislature added 1% to come up with 2.7%. This addition was a $100 million add to the budget.
You can argue that in context this TII does not make up for many years of non-funding for our sector but the reality is moving forward in the last five years, the Governor and Legislature have committed to funding increases that we have never seen before in the last twenty years. Does our sector deserve more money to retain and recruit a quality staff? The resounding answer is yes. We are committed to doing everything in our power to support innovative community support services in the future.
I would be remiss if I did not share that one of the keys to the success of the funding increase was the grassroots efforts of a few behavioral health organizations.
Since the middle of March, we have maintained a presence at the Capitol virtually every day holding signs and having Legislators take pictures with us supporting mental health and human services. To date, we had over 130 legislators take pictures with us in support of the funding.
I would like to thank Jamie Papapetros, MHANYS public policy director, for being there every day and helping to lead the charge as well as MHANYS former public policy director, John Richter, and our lobbyist, Karin Spencer.
Our colleagues at the Association for Community Living (ACL) joined us every day (credit to Laura Isabelle, David Boodram, Emil Slane, Doug Cooper and Justin Hladlik), the folks at the Alliance for Rights and Recovery (Harvey Rosenthal, Luke Sikinyi and the amazing Bob Dodge), Bill Gettman and Eugene White at Northern Rivers and James Norton of NAMI-NYS. Also thanks to InUnity, RISE Housing and Support Services, and the New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare for their support.
I would also like to recognize all the members of our behavioral health coalition, while many of them were not there in person; they still made major contributions to this campaign through legislative meetings, call ins, and local grassroots’ advocacy.
There are a lot of details in the budget that we are gathering but felt that given the enormity of the campaign and the real impact to our workforce that this was important to message out.
