OLMSTEAD UPDATES

News blog follows implementation of landmark 2014 federal consent decree that requires Rhode Island to remedy violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the U.S. Supreme Court's Olmstead decision. Over ten years, Rhode Island must reinvent state services for citizens with developmental disabilities to give them opportunities for supportive employment and meaningful activities in their communities.

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee unveiled a budget plan March 11 that includes $15 million for structural reforms to services for adults with developmental disabilities in the next fiscal year.

Overall, McKee’s has proposed an $11.17 billion budget for Fiscal 2022 which promises to resolve a statewide $336 million deficit while protecting those hardest-hit by the pandemic and helping small business. McKee said the budget “protects Rhode Islanders through an unprecedented public health crisis and lays the foundation for a durable recovery.”

At a noontime virtual briefing for reporters, A. Kathryn Power, director of the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals, said $10 million of the developmental disabilities reform effort will come from state revenue and another $5 million will be funded by the federal government.

She said BHDDH wants to create a “stronger provider community that is fiscally sustainable.” The reform efforts will increase opportunities for employment and other services for adults with developmental disabilities, she said.

Chief Judge John J. MCConnell, Jr. of the U.S. District Court has ordered the state to develop a three-year plan for overhauling privately-run services comply with a 21014 consent decree which requires Rhode Island to integrate adults with developmental disabilities in their communities in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The developmental disabilities budget contains a separate $4.5 million allocation for “alternative placements” for adults with developmental disabilities who live in a state-run group home system called Rhode Island Community Living and Supports.

A ten-percent increase for shared living caregivers also will be in the budget, as part of another group of expenditures intended to encourage more home and community-based services as an alternative to residential care.

Additional information was not immediately available on budget details affecting those with developmental disabilities.

By Gina Macris

Governor Gina Raimondo plans to privatize the state-run group home system in the next budget, cutting 204 fulltime positions from the state payroll during the 2021 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

The privatization is one of many cost-cutting moves Raimondo has proposed to address an overall $200 million structural deficit in a $10.2 billion spending plan, which she submitted to the General Assembly Jan. 16.

The budget emphasizes investments in continued economic growth, education, affordable housing and healthcare; hitting the same notes Raimondo covered in her State of the State address two days earlier.

Within the Division of Developmental Disabilities, the privatization would directly affect about 125 residents of homes run by the state. Details about the transition were not immediately available.

The residents of the state-run group homes represent a small fraction of the 3,835 adults with intellectual challenges who receive state-funded services. Most of these adults are supported by private-sector workers, who would receive a modest 10-cent hourly raise in Raimondo’s budget proposal.

Supervisors in the private sector also would receive proportionate pay increases, budget officials said during a press briefing several hours before the Governor submitted her plan to the legislature.

Few other details were immediately available about changes in funding for the Division of Developmental Disabilities, part of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH.)

Raimondo would put a total of $487.1 million into BHDDH in the next fiscal year, an increase of more than $20 million from the current funding level.

The private system of developmental disability services, now budgeted at $268.7 million, is projected to spend about $4 million less than that total by June 30, according to a budget briefing book. Funding for the fiscal year beginning July 1 would be $290.3 million, but not all of it would go to direct services.