By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent
With Wednesday’s approval of the two-year budget by state lawmakers, many social service agencies can breathe a small sigh of relief. Tens of millions of dollars that had been slashed from Gov. Gary Locke’s budget proposal in January were put back on the table, which eased some of the pressure on agencies like Jewish Family Service. Nonprofit nursing homes and care facilities, such as the Caroline Kline Galland Home, however, did not fare as well.
With the budget released, Ken Weinberg, executive director of Jewish Family Service, is interested to see how his agency is affected.
“It’s either a major disaster or a minor disaster,” Weinberg said, but “I think that it is going to be better than the worst case scenario than we could have come up with.”
Over the past year, JFS has cut back in both jobs and services. As part of the new budget, however, employment programs for refugees, an area in which JFS allocates a lot of its resources, has been saved. These were services that had particularly been hard hit.
“It’s a big win,” said Remy Trupin, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle’s Government Affairs director
JFS Counseling staff and the Seattle Association for Jews with Disabilities, which runs an independent-living facility in Seattle, also had a lot of its staff cut.
A successful fundraiser for the agency in May has helped cushion the blow, but if the state does not continue to come through on its promises to help the needy, Weinberg said he would consider hiring more development staff for year-round fundraising before laying off any more of his employees.
He also expressed relief that some of the money his agency had been expecting to lose will not disappear, but said there is still a long way to go to help fill the growing need for social services.
“I would really like to see us provide more services to Jews with disabilities,” he said, “that would be really needed.”
With tax revenue having dropped severely, the legislature had been looking to close a nearly $3 billion shortfall.
Washington’s state constitution says its budget must be balanced. A special session was convened in May to complete a budget, following an impasse that developed during the regular session.
Among the casualties of the new budget was funding for the basic health care plan. As a result, hundreds of thousands of employed people across the state who are unable to afford their own insurance will be dropped from the rolls.
Meanwhile, in the nursing home arena, the for-profit nursing home industry had been pushing for a $9.25 per bed per day tax on its residents, because the federal government would match those funds for Medicaid patients, thereby making the tax profitable for these homes. Most for-profit nursing homes’ residents — as many as 80 percent, according to Trupin — are recipients of Medicaid.
Kline Galland, however, has a smaller Medicaid-supported population and a larger number of residents that pay for themselves. As a result, Kline Galland could end up subsidizing federal reimbursements to the for-profit nursing facilities in the state.
Kline Galland CEO Josh Gortler fought tooth and nail against a bed tax that will be imposed. Gortler was out of town and unavailable for comment.
Heavy pressure from the Federation’s Government Affairs Committee and from Gortler himself resulted in a drop in the tax to $6.50 per bed, with those dollars directed toward areas where non-profit homes would spend the money.
In a time when Gov. Locke had promised no new taxes to create his budget, the nursing home tax is one that Trupin said is a true tax. However, he added, because federal money was added into the mix, “when you put money on the table that the state doesn’t have to spend, it’s impossible to make that go away.”
Though many social service agencies may have made it through this budget battle, things across the state are not necessarily looking up. A revised revenue forecast, to be released later this month, is expected to yield as much as a $3.5 billion gap. Had the legislature not approved the budget this week, the committee would have had to return to the drawing board.
With the budget approved, Trupin has received kudos from Weinberg and many members of the Jewish community for his tireless work in Olympia, and pushing to keep social services off the chopping block. Despite challenges in budgetary matters, he had some successes, including HB1128, the bill just passed that would stop insurance companies from dropping clients that make claims on hate crimes, and another bill that would make genetic discrimination illegal.
Genetic discrimination has been used against Ashkenazic Jewish women, because of a gene that makes them more susceptible to breast cancer. That bill, which would be similar to laws 46 other states have on the books, has been taken up at the federal level and is likely to make it out of committee.