January 19, 2010

 

Overview of Mental Health Budget:

 

In the coming days, we will be providing more specifics around the mental health budget but there are a few pieces that jump out immediately.  We have already sent out information about today’s budget briefing but we wanted to make sure and highlight some of the key areas from our perspective.

 

 

Proposed Funding for:

 

• Continuation of NY/NY III Housing (256 beds)
• Adult Home Reform Plan Implementation of $1 million (to be used for assessments of adult home residents). This funding is based on whether the Judge in the Adult Home Lawsuit determines whether or not to accept the State’s remedial plan for supported housing beds for adult home residents. We have been clear in our advocacy to urge the Judge to reject the state’s proposal.
• Continuation of funding for some existing housing pipeline beds
• Continuation of funding for Residential Mental Health Units located at the Department of Correctional Services

 

Proposed Funding Cuts:

 

A large percentage of the cuts are a continuation of the Deficit Reduction Plan cuts that took place in December.

 

Other cuts on both the community and state operations side include:

 

• Reduction of non-critical staff through attrition, reduction of work schedule and other efficiencies
• Closing of eight psychiatric center wards with less costly community programs and transitional placement program beds
• The present census for civilly confined sex offenders is not to exceed 230 patients. As a result, forensics capacity will no longer be required at Manhattan Psychiatric Center but still maintained at Central New York and St. Lawrence Psychiatric Centers.
• OMH Local Restructuring including enhanced audits
• Delaying Community Bed Development
• Elimination of Funding for Unified Services in those counties that receive this funding
• Delaying the commitment for the Mental Health COLA (this is the second year in a row that this funding has been delayed). Last year, despite difficult economic times, the state workforce received a 3% COLA while our community did not receive any funding increase.

 

Other Proposed Reforms:

 

• Annualizes funding for Peer Recovery, Technical Assistance and Resource Centers as well as an additional $6 million in funding for the second federal grant award for the New York Work Pay Program

 

• Continuing of Ambulatory Restructuring to  expand access to outpatient clinic treatment, and support implementation of the new Ambulatory Patient Group (APG) rate methodology

 

• Restructure existing services for implementation of the Children’s Plan including the redesign of some base resources for Clinic Plus services to improve clinical and operational functioning of children’s clinic treatment

 

 

Other Initiatives in the Budget Related to Mental Health:

 

• There is a proposed cut of $30 million for the small business exemption for Timothy’s Law. This was on top of last year’s $20 million cut. Given the $20 million cut in the Deficit Reduction Plan, this would mean that half of the small employer subsidy would have been cut. We are very concerned about how that will impact the implementation of the subsidy through the small business exemption (employers with under fifty employees).

 

• In the Health Budget, there is a proposal to include both anti-depressants and antipsychotics in the Preferred Drug List. This has always been a priority area for us and adding antipsychotics to the proposal makes a bad public policy decision even worse and it could dramatically impact the medication accessibility for thousands of New Yorkers.

 

Summary:

 

This year’s budget does not project any major mental health cuts unlike last year where we had to fight for restoration of the SSI cut, the 1% across the board community mental health and the proposed cuts to Residential Mental Health Unit (part of the SHU Legislation). The proposed cuts are largely efficiencies through state operations in mental health with some exceptions around delaying community bed development and elimination of Unified Services. There were also minimal adds in this year’s budget which is no surprise. Unfortunately, our continued priority areas around additional funding for the community workforce were not added in the budget. This will be the second year in a row of no COLA for the workforce which given the economic times is not surprising but it still creates additional problems for the community as expenses continue to increase dramatically.

 

We are appreciative of the Administration’s response given the economic climate but we are still very concerned for this year and future years. We do not know how the Legislature will react to the budget. Given that there were additional mental health cuts in the Deficit Reduction Plan from what was proposed by the Governor, we have to pay attention to the Legislature and work with our friends to make sure they get our message about protecting the safety net and protecting the mental health workforce.

 

There are major constituencies that are taking much larger proposed cuts then mental health. Part of our concern is that some of their funding will be restored and that there will be additional cuts in mental health to make up for that shortfall. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

RALLY, RALLY, RALLY:

 

This all leads up to the need for all of you to come to the Mental Health Rally we are holding with NYAPRS and ACL (as well as over ten other statewide mental health organizations) on Tuesday, January 26^th. We need you to lend your voice to the movement.  We must be loud and clear in our advocacy to lead the way in calling for our state leaders to protect the mental health safety net. Visit the site at www.protectmhsafety.net