By Gina Macris

Rhode Island will get more time to comply with a nine-year-old consent decree intended to help adults with developmental disabilities lead meaningful lives, a federal judge said Aug. 1.

Despite major progress, the state will miss the original deadline at the end of June next year.

The new deadline has not yet been set.

After hearing evidence for two hours on the status of compliance efforts, Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of the U.S. District Court ordered state officials to meet with an independent court monitor to negotiate an “addendum” to the consent decree.

The monitor and a Justice Department lawyer roundly praised the state’s recent $75 million investment in developmental disabilities reform as well as an overall strategy for improving employment and integration in the community for adults with developmental disabilities.

But they said actual implementation, measured by changes in people’s lives, falls far short of the progress needed to reach full compliance in 11 months’ time, by June 30, 2024.

McConnell said that while the state has made “tremendous progress,” it is also “abundantly clear that it will not be in compliance July 1.”

“Because we are able to recognize this year in advance, the parties should get together with the monitor and negotiate an addendum to the consent decree to ensure substantial compliance at the quickest possible time.”

“We could sit and wait until July 1, 2024, and see what happens, but that doesn’t seem most effective in improving people’s lives,” McConnell said.

He also said an addendum does not mean renegotiating the consent decree, which was signed in 2014 by the state and the Justice Department (DOJ). An addendum would define how to reach compliance on a “timetable that was not anticipated,” McConnell said.

He asked the monitor, A. Anthony Antosh, to draw up the initial draft addendum for the state’s review. The next court date has been set for Sept. 28 for a private conference involving Antosh and lawyers for the state and the Justice Department.

McConnell presided over a remote-access public hearing that put the state’s recent efforts in the context of the original ten-year timeline of the consent decree.

Antosh said that state’s efforts during the first six and a half years of the consent decree were “well-intentioned”, but the thinking was “too narrow.”

In addition to chronic underfunding of developmental disabilities services, the bureaucratic system in place made it difficult for providers to support employment opportunities and community activities for their clients.

It was only after state faced a possible contempt finding in court and the prospect of heavy fines in 2021 that it came up with a plan to overhaul the entire system – both the rates it pays for services and the way individuals receive those supports.

That so-called “rate review” was completed several months ago, and in June, the General Assembly put $75-million behind the planned reforms. The state filed 1,357 pages of notes with the court to document its progress.

“I commend the efforts of the state,” Antosh said, “but that said, had the efforts been made four or five years ago, we would be in a different place.”

Both he and a Justice Department lawyer, Nicole Kovite Zeitler, said interviews with those eligible for services and their families indicate they are still confused about what changes are coming and how they will be affected.

Antosh has made it clear that consumers’ perceptions about their quality of life will be a prime measure of compliance with the consent decree.

Many of the changes described in the recent overhaul of the developmental disabilities system exist, so far, only on paper, Zeitler said.

Antosh said he was particularly concerned about the vagueness of a core assessment process that is supposed to lead to individualized, flexible budgets for participants seeking jobs and community activities suited to their interests.

The new assessment process, with independent facilitators to guide individuals in shaping service plans, has not yet begun to roll out.

Antosh covers the pluses and minuses of the state’s progress in a detailed 49-page report filed with the court about 90 minutes before the Aug. 1 hearing. Read it here.

Zeitler, the DOJ lawyer, said “We are cautiously optimistic that all the plans will ultimately lead to compliance with consent decree.”

How long it will take remains an open question.