Advocates for Mental Retardation Services Push for COLA Legislation
By Christopher Lilienthal
Staff Reporter, Capitolwire
Without a cost-of-living boost from the state, providers of mental health and retardation services say staffers will continue to struggle with low wages and turnover will remain high, jeopardizing the quality of care for those who receive services.
At a hearing before the House Health and Human Services Committee on April 29th, they urged action on legislation sponsored by Rep. Barb McIlvaine-Smith, D-Chester, that would increase annual funding for mental health and retardation programs based on inflation.
While that hearing was wrapping up, the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee approved a similar bill, sponsored by Sen. Ted Erickson, R-Delaware. McIlvaine-Smith said she hoped the House committee would vote on her bill within a week or two. But even if one of those bills passes both chambers, it still faces a long road to becoming law.
In October 2006, Gov. Ed Rendell vetoed legislation that, like these measures, would have required him to include funding increases in his annual budget proposal for mental health and retardation programs. Those spending boosts would be based on the federal "home health market basket index," an inflation factor focused on costs in the home healthcare industry.
McIlvaine-Smith said that cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, would likely equal about 3 percent a year.
In his 2006 veto message, Rendell wrote that the bill would have cost the state $1.2 billion over five years, and that "expenditure increases must not be legislated on an ad-hoc basis during the fiscal year." The first year cost was about $49 million.
But advocates for the bill said that amount paled in comparison to overall spending on such programs, and that the investment was worth it to retain good employees in low-paying direct service jobs.
"It just doesn't make sense for Pennsylvania to invest $1 billion in our special education system and then graduate those students into an inadequate and underfunded adult service system," said Cindy Vriens, the mother of a young woman with autism, who testified at the House hearing for the Arc of Pennsylvania, an advocacy group for mentally retarded Pennsylvanians.
House lawmakers at the hearing said a COLA for these providers should be a priority.
"This is a publicly funded system. There is no private money in this," McIlvaine-Smith said afterward. "Those people come into the system bringing no private money with them." She said she was optimistic that she and her colleagues could change Rendell's mind. The 2006 bill passed the House unanimously and the Senate by a vote of 46-3, before Rendell vetoed it.
Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo responded by e-mail: "Providing COLAs to all those that deserve them is fiscally unrealistic and legislating certain groups as winners is imprudent. The Administration shares the legislature's concerns but is committed to living within its means in a tight budget year."
Gene Bianco, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Association of Rehabilitation Facilities, said studies by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee have found staff turnover for the industry to be around 40 percent annually. He and others attributed that to low wages.
George Kimes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Community Providers Association, said that in the past six budgets, mental health and retardation service providers didn't receive COLA increases in three budgets.
Bianco said that over the past 13 years, funding for these programs has been cut by 30 percent, when costs are compared to inflation.
Every year providers don't get a COLA means the industry loses one payroll period, he said.
"What I find in this career is that the best and the brightest can't stay in the role of a direct service provider and make ends meet," said Tia DeFlavia, who works for Special People in Northeast, a
In March, Public Welfare Secretary Estelle Richman said she struggled over whether to give non-medical service providers a COLA in next year's budget but concluded it would be too costly. Richman told the House Appropriations Committee that it would cost $108 million to give a 2-percent bump to nursing homes, mental health and mental retardation treatment programs, childcare facilities, community-based family centers and a variety of other service providers.
Richman testified before the House Health and Human Services Committee and the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, urging them to approve a plan for the department to take over the payment of pharmacy benefits from managed care providers for about 1 million Medicaid recipients.
Several lawmakers are skeptical of that plan, but Richman said they should consider it, since it is the best chance for the department to save money that could go toward future provider COLAs