Last Friday, Governor Dayton released his Supplemental Budget proposal. In this proposal the Governor does not include a rate increase for Home and Community Based Services and makes a legislative clarification that would reduce an automatic inflationary increase for DWRS providers by 7%. ARRM views this as a 7% cut to providers and in conjunction with almost 100 ARRM members and other organizations across the state sent a letter to Governor Dayton today, outlining our concern and frustration with this cut.
The House and Senate also released their initial budget targets. In the House a cut to Health and Human Services of almost $600 million has been proposed, the Senate proposes a cut of $335 million to Health and Human Services. ARRM is greatly concerned with these proposed cuts and sent out an Action Alert to members on Monday, urging contact to legislators about the importance of prioritizing and investing in a wage increase for Direct Support Professionals. If you have not already, please send your Representative and Senate member a message.
This week also saw legislation continue to move through the committee process. The DWRS Coalition, which ARRM is an active participant in, continued to meet with representatives from the Department to come to a final agreement on our proposed DWRS legislation. At the time of this writing there are currently only two outstanding issues that ARRM and members of the coalition will continue to negotiate with DHS in an effort to come to a final agreement.
In the Senate, components of the Department’s Policy bill were amended to another piece of legislation. Barb Turner testified against pieces of this amendment during a committee hearing on Wednesday and received commitment from the Chair of the Committee that he is willing to listen to our concerns in an effort to come to a final agreement. ARRM is currently in talks with the Department about a couple components of their bill and hope to come to a final agreement.
Next Friday marks the final committee deadline, which means all finance bills must be through committee. We anticipate a draft of the Health and Human Services Omnibus bills to be released early next week.
--Sara Grafstrom, Director of Government Relations and Member Advocacy
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