Anticipation in Albany
Behind closed doors, Legislature seemingly making good changes
With the behind-the-scenes budget negotiations well underway in Albany, it looks like the Assembly and Senate are maintaining most of Governor Paterson’s Medicaid reforms and proposing some important fixes to Paterson’s so-so social-services budget. These changes include reinstituting funding for job training for HIV-positive people and nixing the cut in the state’s share of SSI payments.
Both the Senate and Assembly have indicated they will reinstate the $1.4 million program that funds job training for HIV-positive welfare recipients. The funding was inexplicably cut by the Governor, even though this $1.4 million program was ranked high on the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA)‘s list of “mission-driven” programs. In last year’s budget hash-out, when the same funding was threatened, AIDS groups won the fight to restore the funding.
“I am thrilled that it looks like this program will be able to continue,” said Frederick Taylor, a Housing Works job training alum who lobbied legislators to continue to fund the program. The successful welfare-to-work program placed 615 poor New Yorkers with HIV/AIDS into employment between 2003 and 2008.
In addition, legislators have indicated that cuts to social services will be restored. Paterson proposed reducing the New York State share of funding to SSI recipients by $84 million. “If Paterson’s ask went through, people on SSI would be living at 80 percent of the poverty line,” said Shelly Nortz, Coalition for the Homeless deputy executive director.
What do the unions have up their sleeves?
But all this secrecy, and lack of public hearings, are leaving health care advocates nervously waiting to see if Paterson’s health-care reforms will stand.
“The general support and the will is there among legislators for the governor’s major health reforms, but it’s been frustrating,” said Lara Kassel, the coordinator for Medicaid Matters, a group that is supportive of Governor Paterson’s Medicaid reforms.
The offices of Assembly health chair Dick Gottfried and Senate health chair Tom Duane didn’t respond to the Update by deadline. Sources say that both legislators are largely in favor of the reforms.
“Obviously the opposing position is out there,” Kassel added. “Their ads are no longer running, but we know they’re still working hard, especially behind closed doors.”
Kassel refers to the Greater New York Hospital Association and the 1199 Health Care Workers Union, which for months ran millions of dollars’ worth of ads misleading New Yorkers about Governor Paterson’s health care reforms. For example, one series of ads blamed Paterson for the closure of two Queens hospitals, when in actuality the state gave the hospitals more than $50 million in state dollars in an attempt to save them.
According to this week’s Crain’s Health Pulse, hospital trade association officials are “increasingly optimistic” about staving off the much-needed changes and then getting fired Director of State Operations Dennis Whelan and State Medicaid Director Deborah Bachrach, both of whom are health-care reform supporters.
Contrary to the misleading ads, the truth is Governor Paterson’s Medicaid reforms would actually expand care for the poorest New Yorkers, while still saving $2.4 billion in taxpayer dollars. (To read more about this campaign, and Housing Works’ opposition, check out the Update‘s Why Did the Lobbyist Chicken Cross the Road?)
Unlike in past years, the Assembly and the Senate aren’t expected to issue separate one-house budgets this session, but instead will negotiate with the governor behind closed doors. The Update will keep you posted.
Posted on March 19, 2009 at 11:52 pm
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