Disability rights advocates gather Feb. 26 at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix to urge Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican legislative leaders to remedy a funding shortfall in the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities that could leave them suddenly without essential services. Photo by Caitlin Sievers | Arizona Mirror
In seven days, Arizona’s Division of Developmental Disabilities is expected to run out of money.
Arizonans with disabilities and their families are awash in anxiety, finding themselves forced to grapple with the increasing likelihood that they’ll lose access to crucial services in May, all because the Republicans who control the state legislature and the governor continue to fight over how to resolve the funding shortage at DDD.
A GOP proposal to fund DDD was heavily amended on Wednesday before it passed through the Senate by a vote of 16-13. Only one Republican, Sen. Jake Hoffman, voted alongside Democrats to oppose Senate Bill 1743.
But GOP hopes that the proposal would land on Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk were dashed when the Arizona House of Representatives rejected its identical bill after several Republicans — many of them members of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus — joined with Democrats to oppose it.
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Before the House struck down the amendment to House Bill 2945, Hobbs, a Democrat, had already promised that it was “dead-on-arrival” because it would take $38 million from the Housing Trust Fund. Hobbs said that money has already been allocated to down payment assistance and housing projects to help seniors and military veterans.
Legislators, who are constitutionally responsible for funding state government, have had since January to negotiate a supplemental funding bill to allocate $122 million to DDD to get it through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. But they’ve instead played politics for months, letting care for some of the state’s most vulnerable people hang in the balance.
“What a sad, sad day. A shameful day for the state of Arizona,” House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos said during debate on the House floor Wednesday. “After months of knowing that this supplemental appropriation was needed, this chamber and the majority who leads it sat and did nothing week, after week, after week.”
If the legislature and Hobbs don’t agree on a supplemental funding measure by April 30, the nearly 60,000 Arizonans with conditions like cerebral palsy, autism and other developmental disabilities will lose access to vital services. Parents who rely on those services have been trekking to the Capitol regularly since January to beg legislators to find a solution that won’t mean they have to quit their jobs to care for their children or institutionalize them.
On Wednesday, as Phoenix Republican Rep. Matt Gress introduced the amendment that later failed, he said it was not the time to cast blame for the funding gap — immediately after he blamed Hobbs for it.
‘Lives are on the line’: Families fight to preserve Arizona’s Parents as Paid Caregivers program
A back-and-forth between Gress and Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria, used up most of the 30 minutes of debate time on the amendment Wednesday, and didn’t allow much time for Democrats to weigh in. Gress, the former budget director for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, and Livingston, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, have been two of the most outspoken critics of what they’ve called Hobbs’ financial mismanagement of DDD.
The Parents as Paid Caregivers program, which was responsible for a large chunk of DDD’s budget deficit, trains parents and then pays them to provide in-home care to their own children — instead of third-party caregivers — but only if they require “extraordinary care” above and beyond typical parenting tasks. That might include assisting a teenager who has cerebral palsy, autism or cognitive disabilities with tasks like bathing, dressing and eating.
The program was initially entirely federally funded, but beginning this month, the state is on the hook for around one-third of the cost.
The PPCG program has expanded over the last year from about 3,000 participants to around 6,000, even after Republicans in the legislature refused to provide specific funding for it. They accused Hobbs of executive overreach for allowing the program to balloon without the necessary funding to pay for it.
Gress’ failed amendment would have required that the Arizona Health Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program that runs DDD, acquire authorization from the legislature before it obtains certain waivers from the federal government. The legislature would also have to approve waivers that expand services to new populations, increase services offered or make changes that cause a jump in utilization of 10% or more.
“Those changes cost the state money,” Gress said. “We have to budget for it, because if we don’t, we would be in the same situation that we are right now.”
But Democrats in the Senate called those waiver approval requirements “poison pills” that could threaten the existence of PPCG — and possibly even AHCCCS itself.
“We need to look at this bill, if there’s poison pills here that will really impact families for generations,” Sen. Lauren Kuby, D-Tempe, said.
De Los Santos criticized Republican leaders in the House for killing a bipartisan supplemental funding bill last week by stacking a House Appropriations Committee with additional Republicans who opposed the amendment just minutes before a meeting started.
In the Senate
The bill that Senate Republicans passed on Wednesday put in place what they said are necessary guardrails to prevent exponential spending through the PPCG program.
Senate Democrats criticized Republicans for not including them in the development of the extensive amendment to SB1743 that they said was provided to them only minutes before legislators began discussing the changes on Wednesday.
In addition to the increased legislative oversight of the AHCCCS waiver process, the amendment would place more rules surrounding the use of the PPCG program. Those include a 40-hour per week cap, which Hobbs had already planned to implement last October, but delayed until July. It would also prevent parents from billing for care while their children are at school or hospitalized, which Sen. John Kavanagh said were changes recommended by service providers and parents themselves.
Senate President Warren Petersen said that the amendment was the result of many stakeholder meetings with parents and that he believed the parents who have been at the Capitol advocating for DDD funding would support it.
Democrats argued that those parents hadn’t had time to read the amended version of the bill before the Senate voted on it.
“We need to do better by these children and their families,” said Phoenix Democratic Sen. Analise Ortiz. “We can do better by them. Time is running out. We should not be wasting time on a proposal like this one that is filled with poison pills, and that was not even posted for the public to see until after we had debated.”
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This post was originally authored and published by Caitlin Sievers from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
