CCC Testimony: New York State Senate Finance Committee and Assembly Ways and Means Committee Hearing on the New York State Fiscal Year 2013-2014 Mental Hygiene Executive Budget Proposals

Published February, 2013

CCC submitted testimony about the impact the Governor’s Executive Budget would have on children and families at the February 27, 2013 joint Senate/Assembly Hearing on the Executive Budget for State Fiscal Year 2013-2014.

CCC’s testimony commended proposals to continue expanding supportive housing units to vulnerable families, promote collaborative care through the integration of behavioral health into primary care services, reinvest savings from consolidating and closing outdated and ineffective State Psychiatric facilities into community-based services that are in desperate need of capacity building and permanently extend the long-time temporary exemption to the State’s Social Work Licensing Law to prevent a social service workforce shortage.

CCC’s testimony expressed deep concern about the Governor’s proposal to reduce Medicaid payment rates by six percent, or $120 million, to nonprofits contracted with the State to provide group home services to the intellectually and developmentally disabled (IDD) in response in a newly formed $1.1 billion Medicaid deficit. Rate reductions of this magnitude would likely force providers to cut back on staff, services or both. With scaled-back operations, CCC noted that the burden of these cuts to providers will ultimately fall on group home residents with IDD, exacerbating existing barriers to care for the State’s most vulnerable individuals and their families.

CCC expressed support for the creation of the Mental Hygiene Stabilization Fund to preserve the State’s developmental disability services that would otherwise be at-risk for reductions and closures following this substantial loss in dedicated federal Medicaid revenue. However, CCC strongly cautioned against efforts to finance the Stabilization Fund at the expense of other critical Medicaid-supported programs.