RI Plans Moving Toward Shared Residential Living Model

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In an effort to close a projected $6-million shortfall, the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals plans to move up to 300 adults with developmental disabilities from group homes into shared residential living arrangements by the end of March.

Maria Montanaro, the agency's director, said it's a model the state should be moving toward regardless of whether there is a budget crisis. Still, she acknowledged that moving that many people that quickly is aggressive and might not be achievable. There are currently 3,800 individuals with developmental disabilities receiving state care. Roughly 1,300 of those individuals are in group homes.

R.I. House Adds $9.6 Million to Budget for Services

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rhode Islanders with developmental disabilities would see funding for state programs and services they receive increased by about $9.6 million in the budget year that begins July 1, under a spending plan presented by the House Finance Committee Thursday night.
That $9.6 million includes some $4.7 million in state funding and a corresponding match of federal monies.
It comes a year after lawmakers voted to slash their funding by some $24 million.

R.I. Agencies Reeling from Budget Cuts

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. -- Social service agencies working with adults with developmental disabilities are worried that budget cuts and state reforms will radically change the way they help their clients.

“There are major issues with the budget,” said Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, an organization representing 19 private providers of services and supports to people with developmental disabilities. “The governor proposed a $9.5 million reduction for services for adults with behavioral and developmental disabilities. House Finance passed $24 million in cuts directly to individual services, and a $4.2 million cut in transportation that is embedded in the [state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals] budget and earmarked for us. It is another unfunded mandate that heavily affects people who live at home with their families.”

R.I. Budget Approved with Cuts to Developmental Disability Funding

PROVIDENCE, R.I. –– A $7.7-billion state budget for the year that begins Friday cleared the General Assembly on a hectic day at the State House, and now heads to Governor Chafee for his signature.

The tax-and-spending plan, approved on a 30-to-7 vote of the state Senate on Wednesday, was part of a packed agenda for lawmakers, who are pushing to bring the 2011 legislative session to a close by the end of the week, in time for the July 4 holiday.

Representatives and senators faced potential votes on more than 100 bills, including a number of controversial proposals that have been hotly debated all session.

The Senate passed legislation, already passed by the House, creating civil unions for gay couples in Rhode Island, and sent that to the governor. A key House committee took up legislation, already approved by the Senate, that would determine who controls the disposition of more than 40 prime acres of Providence real estate opened by the relocation of Route 195.

Meanwhile, opponents of binding arbitration flocked to the State House to pack hearing rooms in an effort to dissuade lawmakers from passing bills that, they claimed, will bring Rhode Island’s already financially struggling cities and towns to their knees.

“It makes no sense during the final 48 hours of this legislative session to rush this through,” complained Daniel L. Beardsley, executive director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns.

Senate budget approval followed more than one hour of debate in which a number of proposals to significantly alter the spending plan were resoundingly rejected leaving the House-approved plan unchanged.

Senate Republicans, by far the minority in the chamber, launched failed bids to repeal the $500 corporate-minimum tax and to introduce changes to state worker pensions.

Sen. John J. Tassoni, Jr., D-Smithfield, a former top-ranking labor union official, wanted to strike down language eliminating new longevity pay increases for state workers, a controversial part of the budget that unions say violates their collective bargaining rights.

And Sen. Harold M. Metts, D-Providence, failed in his attempt to add funding to human-service programs dealing with housing, subsidized health insurance for low-income families, and programs for the developmentally disabled.

“I agonized over the cuts to the most vulnerable in our society,” said Metts, whose district covers South Providence. “Why are we helping AIG and Bank of America, but we can’t help the poor? I can’t understand it.”

R.I. Budget Moving Ahead with Severe Cuts

PROVIDENCE, R.I. –– The full Senate will vote on Wednesday to approve a proposed $7.7-billion state budget, following Senate Finance Committee approval on Monday.
The committee considered the House-approved budget for less than an hour before passing the plan unchanged, with only Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III, D-Providence, opposing.
Ciccone and other committee members expressed concern about the impact of some $24 million in cuts to programs and services for persons with developmental disabilities such as autism or Down syndrome. Still others were disappointed at the lack of direct funding for subsidized housing.
"Senator Ciccone and I have been absolutely hammered with e-mails this week," said Sen. James E. Doyle II, D-Pawtucket. "People are making comments that [persons with developmental disabilities] cannot help themselves. They are heart-wrenching emails."

Editorial: A Pretty Good Budget?

It's disgraceful that the Providence Journal does not speak out about the many citizens impacted by the proposed budget--cuts to services for individuals with disabilities are not "sad but necessary," as many protesting the state capitol today will attest.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - It has been another brutal year to do a state budget, but the plan likely to be approved today by the Rhode Island House is a pretty reasonable piece of hard work.

First, while the package would extend the state sales tax to a few items and services, the House tax package looks little like Governor Chafee’s proposed two-tier system, to be applied to many items and services, and whose costs and time-consuming complexity would hurt job creation as the state struggles to get out of its long slump.

Meanwhile, to avoid big tax increases, there are sad but necessary cuts to social-service, housing, mass transit (perhaps a false economy) and some other programs in the House budget. We hope that at least some of those funds can be restored in coming years, assuming that the budgets that do so are fiscally prudent.

R.I. Protesters Decry Proposed Budget Cuts

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — They came on foot and, in some cases, in wheelchairs, gathering more than 250 strong at the State House on Thursday to protest budget cuts they say will hurt one of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable populations — people with developmental disabilities.
"My son Patrick is multi-handicapped and lives in a group home in Middletown," Cynthia Feighan, one of about a half-dozen speakers, told the crowd that gathered in the State House rotunda. "He needs help getting dressed, going to the bathroom. Someone needs to prepare his meals and help him eat his meals. He needs help getting into bed, getting out of bed, turning on a radio, turning it off."
But with the House of Representatives poised to vote Friday on a budget that would cut spending for developmental disability services by about $24 million, according to figures from the advocates, Feighan and others wonder what will happen to their loved ones.

Parents Urge Lifeline for Autism Program

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The state child welfare agency’s plan to eliminate $1 million in its budget next year for a program to educate children with autism drew emotional testimony from parents of children afflicted with the disorder at hearing Wednesday before the House Finance Committee.
Claudia Swaider, the mother of two boys with autism, held up a photograph of them as she recounted their ordeal. Her son, Adam, used to spiral out of control in a regular public school, punching his head through walls and hitting staff, until the public school administrators "threw up their hands."
Her family was in turmoil; her marriage fraying. Then, she and her husband found out about The Groden Center, a Providence-based school and residential treatment center for children with autism and other developmental disorders.
"Groden was the only one able to take a chance on both boys," Swaider said, choking back tears. "They took my family, which was being slowly destroyed, and gave Adam and Matthew the chance of a lifetime."