In information letters 10-156, 10-157, and 10-158 the Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS) is proposing to reduce the amount of money paid to Home and Community-based service providers, Intermediate Care Facility for persons with Mental Retardation providers, and Nursing Facility providers by 2%. This is being proposed to meet to Governor’s, Lieutenant Governor’s, and House Speaker’s December 6th directive that Texas state agencies must identify a 2.5% savings on the current fiscal year.
The 2.5% is based upon the amount of general revenue that was appropriated at the beginning of the year. This is problematic as the fiscal year began in September and it’s now almost January and many state agencies have already spent or committed a great deal of their funds. This means that the cuts are going to be much larger than 2.5% on the remaining funds.
DADS has decided that the way to do this, and they have nothing but terrible choices here, is to pay the people that provide services to our disabled and elderly populations less to provide those services. While providing services to needy people, those providers are also businesses that are (clearly) providing these services for money. They have payrolls, it is already difficult to recruit and retain qualified staff, and it can be a difficult and frustrating job. By reducing the amount that they are paid, this has the long-term ramification of eventually reducing the number of providers, making services more challenging to access and reducing the quality of the services. Perhaps it even encourages the kind of issues seen in the state supported living centers, which largely springs from staffing shortages.
Many people feel that individuals with disabilities are best served in family or community environments, as opposed to being institutionalized. This approach to solving the budget problem, in the long run, seems to work against the community/family option and would seem to leave institutionalization as the only option for some families.
It’s also a bad harbinger of things to come. With Texas having an estimated $18 billion shortfall over the next biennium, the Legislature will have to prioritize what to save and what to cut. It’s easiest to make cuts to people you cannot see and who do not have a voice.
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