By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
At the start of this year’s legislative session, both houses of the state’s legislature will face a $1.5 billion shortfall in the state’s coffers and two proposed budgets that, depending upon which avenue is traveled, could either hold the state’s poor afloat or dump them into the Sound.
The state’s Jewish community’s social service organizations could be in the line of fire if a no-new-taxes mantra is repeated by the two legislative chambers and the governor’s office.
Of the state’s $25 billion budget, approximately $6 billion is directed toward health and human services
“You really have to take that $1.5 billion out of there,” said Remy Trupin, Director of Government Affairs at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Trupin, who lobbies for the state’s Jewish organizations in Olympia, said that when the state faced a $2.6 billion shortfall in the previous biennial budget cycle, as much fat as possible was trimmed to balance the budget, a constitutional mandate.
Which means that this year, further services will almost undoubtedly have to be cut.
Outgoing governor Gary Locke’s no-new taxes budget would inevitably result in the cutting of social services across the board. According to Trupin, those cuts would include “elimination of the program for basically homeless adults for cash assistance, big cuts to nursing homes, big cuts to health care programs for kids.”
An alternative budget, which includes “all a bunch of little sin taxes for which they have about $600 million in revenue,” said Trupin, would help to trim that shortfall. “For that budget, most of the things that we care about are funded.”
Trupin’s agenda is mostly based upon helping the Federation’s beneficiary agencies hold onto and maximize state dollars. The agencies most affected by the state’s budget are the Caroline Kline Galland Center—which includes its residences as well as its day services such as Meals on Wheels—Jewish Family Service, which receives funding for its refugee programs, and the Stroum Jewish Community Center, which receives funding for childcare and early childhood programs. Locke’s budget would include some new funding for childcare subsidies, Trupin said.
Among priorities for seniors:
ï Bringing Medicaid payments in line with today’s dollars. Today Medicaid, which pays for the care of many residents at nursing homes such as Kline Galland, bases its payments on 1999 costs. In the past six years, liability insurance has gone up close to 250 percent, while Workers’ Compensation, employee salaries and benefits have also increased significantly.
ï Eliminating the provider-specific bed tax. A $6.50 per day/per bed tax was enacted in 2003 by the legislature to enable the state to receive increased federal dollars for nursing homes. However, when the state disburses these monies back to nursing homes, instead of providing payment based on the number of beds, it pays based on the number of Medicaid payments, leaving homes such as Kline Galland with less in return than it originally paid out.
Priorities for refugees and economically disadvantaged include:
ï Maintaining funding for the state’s General Assistance program. Adults not employable or eligible for federal Social Security funds, many of whom are elderly refugees, receive a monthly cash benefit. Many of these people are clients of JFS’ Emergency Services program, which helps in funding basic needs such as food and medical care.
ï Requiring domestic violence training for counselors. Legislation has been proposed that licensing applicants for psychologists and counselors as well as social work graduates be required to train in recognizing and appropriately responding to domestic violence situations.
ï Bringing mental health insurance coverage to the level of medical and surgical services. Mental health insurance coverage is currently not required under state law, nor is there a specific mandate for what level of coverage should be provided by those companies that do. Proposed legislation would seek coverage for unmet needs.
“This is the safety net, these are the people for whom there is not much else,” said Claudia Berman, Assistant Director of Jewish Family Service, referring to the General Assistance program and JFS’s Limited English Pathway Program, which assists refugees and immigrants in job searches and language proficiency. She cited the circular funding conundrum that keeps people in poverty.
“Clients come to us from [the Department of Social and Health Services], the welfare system. There is great pressure on DSHS to have people get off welfare and be employed,” she said. “Limits in this funding is a problem, so these people will end up remaining on welfare if they can’t be helped.”
During last year’s session, Trupin worked with the Anti-Defamation League to push through a bill that banned discrimination based on genetic information. That bill, which passed with unanimous support, set up privacy and confidentiality standards.
“This year, we’re working with a whole coalition of groups in the arena of life insurance, disability and to improve the informed consent of people who are taking part in genetic testing,” said Trupin, who said the goal would be to educate the public on how that information can be used in the future.
The Federation and the ADL will also work together on legislation that would stop insurance companies from canceling policies on people who have traveled to Israel.
Most major insurance companies “have been asking applicants for life insurance to indicate where they’ve traveled in the past two years, and many of them ask applicants to say where they plan on traveling in the near future,” said Rob Jacobs, the ADL’s Northwest regional director. “Because Israel is currently on the State Department’s watch list, many companies, based on that virtue alone, are immediately denying applicants life insurance.”
Jacobs said the ADL’s objection is based in the statistics: “The number of tourists who have been killed or wounded in Israel as a percentage of the total tourists traveling there is below the rate of tourists who have gotten injured in automobile accidents, not only in Israel but in other countries,” he said. He said he would like to see insurance based on statistical risk, and “not on any third-party list that doesn’t necessarily indicate additional risk.”
He noted that many Arab and Islamic countries do not have the same restrictions, because the State Dept. has not singled them out. Earlier this year, Allstate settled on a case in California, so it is the one large insurer that will issue policies to Israel travelers.
The last area that both the Federation and ADL will work on together is to ensure that the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community is added to the list of individuals covered under the state’s human rights code.
“It’s adding that category into the other existing categories that are already protected,” Jacobs said, and added that any attempt to constitutionally amend the definition of marriage would be “adamantly” opposed by his organization.