Daily Dispatch, January 27, 2009: Governor's budget comes out today

Governor Pawlenty's much anticipated budget comes out today at 1 pm. The budget documents will posted on the Minnesota Management and Budget website sometime after 1:00 pm. We'll post our analysis of the Governor's budget here on our blog on Wednesday or Thursday. 

We'll be visiting the capitol press corps this afternoon at 2:30 pm with our reaction to the budget. At this point, our main messages are:

• If you must make cuts, make them fairly and proportionately across all areas of state government, including K-12 education, which constitutes the largest piece of the budget.

• Unfair cuts to Minnesota's most vulnerable citizens could have a disastrous effect —  not only for the people they support, but for local economies and main street businesses who rely on the revenue of professional caregivers.

• Disability services are funded through Medicaid, with half the money coming from the federal government and half from the state. So, if you cut $1.00 from the state budget, people with disabilities lose $2.00 in services.

• ARRM's system reform bill will be part of the solution for the current financial crisis and for cost-effective disability services in the future.

We're hoping Rep. Pogemiller and/or Speaker Kelliher will also carry our message for us with the media. For now, we'll see how key legislators are responding to Pawlenty before we issue any alerts or calls to action. Lawmakers' responses will likely give us something to build on.

According to the Star Tribune today, it appears that Gov. Pawlenty is sticking to his formula of cutting deeply into health care while sparing K-12 schools. Read the story here: http://tinyurl.com/c6gj3w.

Other news:

• ARRM is meetying with DHS' Alex Bartolic Wednesday morning at 7:30 am to discuss a variety of issue, such as unallotment, payment methodologies, leave days, open positions. We'll let you know how this went later this week.

• The Health Care and Human Services Policy and Oversight committee, chaired by Rep. Paul Thissen, is meeting on THURSDAY, January 29, 2009 at 2:45 PM in room 200 State Office Building.
  
  The Agenda is: HF266 (Fritz) Parental fees modified for services for persons with developmental disabilities -- Informational only HF295 (Loeffler); Consumer-directed community supports modified and money appropriated;Transforming Minnesota's disability service and finance systems, ARRM report. It is not uncommon to cancel or reshuffle hearing dates and times, so check this website which has the committee's schedule often. We'll also do our best to let you know if this meeting is canceled or rescheduled.