May 1, 2002
As you may recall, in past years, after the budget was done,
the Senate and
House came together again to do am omnibus bill which would deal with any
additional funding issues that came up after the budget bill passed. But
not
this year! Oh no! We still have not passed a budget bill in either House,
and your guess is as good as mine as to when or even whether they will pass
the budget bill!
But they did have issues to look at during Omnibus and that's what the House
Appropriation committee did yesterday and this morning.
Of major interest to us is that they added no more money to the waiting list
or the DD Grants. They did however, draft language to have the Long Term
Care Task force review Level of Care Scores. They want to know what the
person looks like who scores between 26 and 40, what their needs are etc.
We'll have exact language on that proviso today. By the way, it was
Brenda
Landwehr idea to bring this up again. She want's to know about "reality,
not
rhetoric" and not hearing it from "loud voices."
I hope there will be some strong voices in Wichita this fall during election
time.
Chairman Neufeld pointed out, KU tells us that first we need an accurate
Screening tool. Our hope is that they will start with that. For your
information, the Long Term Care Task force meets during the interim (summer
and fall) and makes recommendations back to the 2003 legislature.
They also discussed again the "parent pay bill" and asked for
language in a
proviso to get parents to kick in for the cost of children services. Not
sure where that ended up, we'll have to wait for the committee report.
In another interesting turn yesterday, InterHab announced their intention to
sue the SRS for not providing adequate and reasonable wages to direct care
staff, but they would consider taking $26 million dollar increase instead of
suing. Today is their push day at the Capital. We'll be watching
that one
closely.
As the week goes on, the Legislature has to sometime pass a budget bill, pass
a tax plan (unless they cut the budgets further) finish Omnibus, and other
bills outstanding, and all has to be signed off by the Governor. If he
vetoes any of the bills, the Legislature must come back an over ride the veto
or craft a new bill the Governor will sign.
Oh, and another piece of news, sounds like April estimates are down, which
means we're in a deeper hole!
When will it all end? At this point I am not booking my flight to NCIL
which
is mid June!
Gina