RI Project Sustainability Commission To Meet Jan. 14 To Wrap Up Recommendations

By Gina Macris

The special legislative commission studying the way Rhode Island pays for developmental disability services will hold its final meeting Jan. 14 to summarize some 70 recommendations that have been submitted by the commission’s 21 members, according to its chairman, State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown.

The panel, which began its deliberations during the fall of 2018, has been dubbed the Project Sustainability Commission after the name of the fee-for-service reimbursement system for private agencies that deliver most state-funded social services to some 4,000 adults with developmental disabilities.

Project Sustainability, enacted by the General Assembly in 2011, has been widely criticized by service providers and families as an excuse to cut funding.

Project Sustainability is under review by the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, which has hired outside consultants to expand its analytical capabilities. The review, expected to conclude in June, is separate from the commission.

The commission meeting on Jan. 14 will begin at 2:30 p.m. in the Senate Lounge of the State House.

RI Consent Decree Monitor Will Draw Up Proposed Judicial Order to Ensure Adequate State Funding

By Gina Macris

Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court signaled during a hearing April 10 that he is prepared to act to ensure that Rhode Island complies with a requirement of a 2014 consent decree that calls for “timely” funding of integrated services for adults with developmental disabilities.

But it is not yet clear what judicial action might look like in relation to the language of the consent decree, which does not quantify compliance in terms of dollars and cents.

Governor Gina Raimondo has proposed a developmental disabilities budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 that would cut $18.4 million in federal and state Medicaid funds from current spending limits on privately-operated developmental disability services for adults and another $3 million from a state-operated network of group homes.  

That reduction comes on the heels of an already-underfunded system of services and would “permanently derail compliance with the consent decree,” said Jeffrey Kasle, lawyer for nine service providers, who spoke during the informal hearing, or “status conference” at the invitation of an independent court monitor.

The monitor, Charles Moseley, said he would  draw up a list of proposed funding-related actions for the judge to consider. Marc DeSisto, the state’s lawyer, and Victoria Thomas, who represented the U.S. Department of Justice, each said they wanted to review the proposal before the judge takes action.

If there is no consensus, McConnell said, he will hold a formal hearing and take evidence before issuing an order.

Since 2016, when he began reviewing the consent decree, McConnell has tried to make information about compliance accessible to the public, insisting that periodic conferences be held in open court and stressing the informality of the proceedings.

The review on April 10 was no exception, as the lawyers and state officials spoke from a podium facing the audience in the towering, mahogany-paneled courtroom, so spectators could better hear the proceedings. McConnell, wearing business clothes instead of his judicial robes, sat near the court stenographer just inside a circular bar that normally separates litigants from the public. 

The informal atmosphere, however, belied the gravity of the funding issue, which McConnell called the “elephant in the room,” and its implications for judicial action.

The monitor, Moseley, and lawyers for the DOJ and the providers all concurred in their concerns over funding. 

Officials of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) said they needed better data to make a case for a bigger budget and noted that $116 million more will have been spent on developmental disabilities during the Raimondo administration,  between 2015 and 2019, than was spent from 2010 to 2014.

It was in 2014 that Rhode Island was found in violation of the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) by relying on a segregated system of work and non-work activities that could survive on significantly less staffing that is mandated today through the consent decree.

Kasle, the providers’ lawyer, noted that the current administration at BHDDH, led by department director Rebecca Boss and the director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities, Kerri Zanchi, have shown a commitment to collaborating with providers that is the “best in a decade.”

But much of the state’s current compliance with the consent decree occurs because the private providers are doing the work, Kasle said.

“If all they can do is keep people safe,” he said, consent decree compliance will “fall apart.”

A decade ago, direct care workers made $3 to $5 more an hour than minimum wage, Kasle said. The legislative efforts to raise wages in the last two years, which added $11 million to the budget, are appreciated but they have just kept the workers on a par with the minimum wage, he said

For providers,  who can pay only $11 or $12 an hour, “it’s almost impossible to fill jobs,” Kasle said.

And if the state is to integrate individuals with developmental disabilities in the community, allowing them a choice in how their programming will be achieved, the state will need more direct care workers, he said.

Victoria Thomas, a lawyer for the DOJ, said that on the most recent site visit in February, she and her colleagues spoke to a provider who had had to lay off several middle managers because of budgetary constraints.

Employees have seen their salaries cut; paid vacation was eliminated, and workers have had to increase their contributions to health care, Thomas said.

The judge, meanwhile, asked Boss, the BHDDH director, whether the state can comply with the consent decree if Governor Raimondo’s budget for the next fiscal year is enacted without any changes.

Boss said she didn’t know the answer. Nor could she say whether BHDDH could comply with the consent decree if no cuts were made and current spending was maintained. 

Boss said BHDDH is “committed to implementing the consent decree. We want every individual to live in the community as they wish.”

Last fall, Boss submitted her department's budget request for the fiscal year beginning July 1 far higher than what Governor Raimondo later proposed to the legislature.  Boss asked for a total of $278.8 million in federal and state funds, or $28 million more than what Raimondo ultimately submitted to the General Assembly.

In a cover letter, Boss wrote at the time that “any further reductions could have further significant repercussions financially and operationally for the department further impacting some of the most vulnerable citizens within our state.”

For the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo has proposed $250.8 million for developmental disabilities, which is $6.1 million less than the bottom line enacted by the General Assembly for the current fiscal year.

The proposal of $250.8 million is also $21.4 million less than current spending levels. Because of current cost overruns, Raimondo has proposed adding $15.3 million to the existing budget of $256.9 million, for a total of $272.2 million, to fill the budget gap through the end of the fiscal year June 30.

RI Direct Care Workers To See Raises in October Paychecks; Legislator Says They Deserve More

By Gina Macris

Raises for direct care workers in Rhode Island, including those who serve persons with developmental disabilities, are scheduled to show up in paychecks in October. But the increases are unlikely to fix problems caused by wages that many consider inadequate to stabilize a workforce plagued by high turnover, high vacancy rates, and high overtime. 

Even after receiving the pay hike, many workers will be forced to continue working second jobs to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, their employers will still have to scramble to fill vacancies, as Massachusetts prepares to pay $15 an hour for the same work beginning July 1, 2018.  Currently, one in six jobs goes unfilled, driving up overtime costs for developmental disability providers, according to the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, (CPNRI), a trade association.  

Those who work with adults with developmental disabilities in Rhode Island make an average of $11.14 an hour, and an estimated increase of 42 cents would bring that hourly rate to $11.56. The exact increase is expected to vary from one agency to another, depending on benefits offered.

Unless the workers are single adults supporting only themselves, $11.56 an hour is not enough for a minimum subsistence wage – no restaurant meals, entertainment or savings accounts - that nevertheless avoids food stamps or other public assistance, according to the Living Wage Calculator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In Rhode Island, 41 percent of those working with adults with developmental disabilities have taken more than one job to make ends meet, according to CPNRI. The trade associaation presented figues to the General Assembly earlier this year that show 65 percent of direct care workers were heads of household in 2014, and 48 percent of them received public assistance between 2011 and 2013, the latest period for which data was available.

Entry-level positions for direct care positions at developmental disability service agencies generally hover a little above the minimum wage, currently $9.60 an hour. But the minimum wage is to get a 50-cent bump to $10.10 on Jan. 1 and another increase, to $10.50 an hour, on Jan. 1, 2019.

 In the current budget, $6.1 million in federal-state Medicaid dollars have been set aside for raises for those who provide direct care to adults with developmental disabilities, effective July 1.

Governor Raimondo also asked for a total of $5.2 million for increasing the pay of home health care aides, but the General Assembly delayed implementation of that raise until Oct. 1. House spokesman Larry Berman said that the way a similar increase was paid out to home care workers in 2016 made implementation problematic prior to Oct. 1 of the budget year and that issue was taken into account this year. The delayed implementation also saves more than $600,000 in state funds.  

Developmental disability service agencies also can expect to see higher reimbursement rates Oct. 1, but those increases will be retroactive to July 1, in accordance with language in the budget.

State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, who has led a call for improving the prospects of direct care workers, agreed that the direct care workers are treading water, in effect, relative to the minimum wage.  

He said he is well aware that raises enacted in 2016 and 2017 are not enough to compensate them for complex work that is often also physically demanding.

The new Amazon warehouse in Fall River is paying more than $12 an hour to start, he said.

In the fall of 2016, DiPalma launched a “15 in 5” campaign to increase pay of home health care aides and direct care workers to $15 an hour in five years – by July 1, 2021.

There appears to be broad sentiment in the legislature that direct care workers deserve better, judging from the number of bills introduced in the General Assembly earlier this year to speed up the climb to a $15 hourly rate. One measure, sponsored by the House Deputy Majority Leader, Rep. Jean Philippe Barros, D-Pawtucket, would have set Jan. 1 as the implementation date for a $15 hourly wage.

But the bills appear to have been more a gesture more than anything else.

DiPalma, first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that the state’s finances cannot support that kind of a boost immediately.

The state faces the prospect of a $237 million deficit in the fiscal year that begins next July 1, according recent memos from the State Budget Officer, Thomas Mullaney, and the Senate Fiscal Advisor, Stephen Whitney. And that estimateddeficit does not include $25 million in unspecified savings which the state still must trim from the current budget. Jonathan Womer, Director of the Office of Management and Budget,  has expressed skepticism that all the cost-cutting assumptions in the enacted budget can be achieved.

Department heads preparing for the next budget cycle are being asked to cut expenditures by 10 percent, with one exception being entitlement programs, like the federal-state Medicaid program, which funds the pay for home health care aides and developmental disability workers, among many other services. 

RI House Finance Votes For DD Worker Raises, Free Bus Passes, Supplemental DD Services

By Gina Macris

Despite tense negotiations around a $134-million projected revenue shortfall in Rhode Island for the next fiscal year, the House Finance Committee has approved an $11-million increase in federal and state funds to provide raises for direct care workers supporting adults with developmental disabilities and home health care aides in the next fiscal year.

Early the morning of June 16, The House Finance Committee sent an overall $9.2-billion spending package to the full House, which is expected to vote Thursday, June 22.

The Finance Committee’s revised budget also includes $3.4 million a year for two years to restore free bus passes for the elderly and disabled. Since Feb. 1, low-income elderly and disabled riders on the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) have had to pay 50 cents each trip, and 25 cents for each transfer. During the next two years, the executive branch of government is to figure out a permanent solution to ensure that vulnerable Rhode Islanders have access to public transportation.

According to a House spokeswoman, the proposed budget adopts Governor Gina Raimondo’s request for raises for home health and direct care workers who support some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, shouldering great responsibilities for poverty-level pay.

The Governor’s budget plan included $6.2 million — $3 million in state revenue and $3.2 million in federal Medicaid funds — for raises of about 5 percent for direct care employees of private agencies that provide most of the supports for adults with developmental disabilities.  Another $4.4 million –$2.2 million from state revenue and the rest from Medicaid – will raise the pay of home health care aides by 7 percent.

Assuming that the raises pass the House and Senate, some 4,000 developmental disability workers will see increases in their paychecks of about 55 cents an hour, before taxes, sometime before Oct. 1. They now make an average of $11.14 an hour, according to a trade association representing about two thirds of some three dozen agencies operating in Rhode Island.

The latest incremental boost in pay would mark the second consecutive year that home health aides and developmental disability workers would have received wage increases, although there appears to be a growing opinion in both the House and Senate that direct care workers remain woefully underpaid for the job they do.

Last fall, State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, launched a call for this year’s raises as the initial phase of a “15 in 5” campaign that would elevate direct care workers’ pay to at least $15 an hour in five years; by July 1, 2021. A resolution to that effect has passed the Senate Finance Committee, of which DiPalma is vice chairman.

Members of the House have proposed various bills or resolutions to reach that $15 mark sooner, or to ask the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to raise direct care workers’ pay by 28.5 percent to achieve parity with Connecticut and Massachusetts rates by October of this year. Those measures appear to have died in committee.

In hearings in both the House and Senate during the current session, however, legislators have heard testimony that Rhode Island has a tough time competing with Connecticut and Massachusetts for direct care workers, because those states are such an easy commute for many Rhode Islanders.

The House Commission on Vulnerable Populations has included a recommendation that the state strive for direct care wages that are competitive with neighboring states in its final report on its deliberations for the last several months.

During a recent meeting on a draft report, Commission chairman Jeremiah O’Grady, D-Lincoln, the Deputy Majority Leader, said it is clear that salaries for direct care workers have a relationship to quality of care and employee turnover.

“What we see are the most qualified employees going to other states,” he said, and “we hear about very high turnover rates – something like 60 percent – within the first six months” in Rhode Island.

Another factor that will undoubtedly have a bearing on future discussions of direct care pay is that the House Finance Committee agreed to phase in a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage, now $9.60 an hour. That rate would increase 50 cents, to $10.10 an hour, Jan. 1, 2018, and another 40 cents, to $10.50 an hour, on Jan. 1, 2019. That means that the pay of direct care workers will continue to hover around minimum wage or a little higher.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts has committed to raising its rates for direct care workers to $15 in 2018.

Complete figures on the developmental disability budget were not immediately available.But on June 19, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) said that Governor Raimondo got all she asked for in developmental disability spending from the House Finance Committee except for $200,000 in supplements to the current fiscal year and an equal amount in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Last July 1, the state Division of Developmental Disabilities started the current fiscal year with an enacted budget of more than $246 million. Raimondo’s total request for fiscal 2018, beginning July 1, was $256.7 million.

Apart from the raises for direct care workers, the Division of Developmental Disabilities has sought funds to cover an estimated deficit of $3.6 million in the existing budget because of supplemental payments needed to respond to successful appeals of funding allocated for individual client services.  Those payments – not reflected in a separate line item – were nevertheless budgeted at $18 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, according to fiscal analyses done by both the House and Senate.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo asked for an additional $500,000 for supplemental service allocations. That increase would bring the total for such payments to just over $22 million annually. In a Senate Finance Committee hearing earlier this year, DiPalma, the committee’s vice chairman, noted that these extra payments totaled about 10 percent of all reimbursements to private agencies providing developmental disability services. That was too much, he said, indicating that equation the state uses to assign individual funding in the first place needs review.

The compromise budget passed by the House Finance Committee absorbed the $134-million projected revenue shortfall in the next fiscal year through a number of approaches: using one-time revenue, scaling back the Governor’s economic development initiatives, and making a myriad of cuts throughout state government, among others. 

 The Raimondo administration also is expected to make $25 million in unspecified cuts. The $25-million spending reduction and other provisions based on certain assumptions for the future make the budget a tricky one to balance, said DiPalma, a leading advocate for those with developmental disabilities and others receiving Medicaid-funded services.

For example, he said, in the BHDDH budget, there is an expectation that the Eleanor Slater Hospital will be able to shift $1.6 million in operating costs from state revenue to third-party payers during the current fiscal year and an equal amount in the fiscal year beginning July 1. He indicated that achieving all the designated savings in state revenue in the current fiscal year might be a challenge when only ten days remain in the budget cycle.

The BHDDH budget also contains a variety of cuts to capital projects, although a department spokeswoman said funds for improvements to the Eleanor Slater Hospital were transferred to the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), which is part of the Department of Administration.

Despite his concerns about the ability of the state to make the required adjustments to balance the budget, DiPalma said that developmental disability funding is moving in the right direction, with legislators listening to the facts and figures presented to them about the need for quality care.

A more comprehensive picture of the budget is expected to unfold as it goes before the full House and Senate over the next two weeks.