Friday Briefs:

Consent Decree Coordinator Named

• Aryana Huskey has been named Rhode Island’s next Consent Decree Coordinator. She will work with multiple agencies of state government to present a coordinated response to the U.S. District Court on the state’s compliance efforts with a 2014 Olmstead consent decree.
  

  Huskey will begin her new role March 29. She comes to the job “with an extensive background in health and human services, with experience in delivering direct services to vulnerable populations in Rhode Island, and a clinical background,” said Secretary Womazetta Jones and Claire Richards, executive counsel to governor, in an email to various state officials.

  Huskey will be a “significant asset to the team in working with the stakeholders involved in the Consent Decree,” Jones and Richards said. No other details were immediately available.

Save The Date - Mon. March 22

• A virtual public forum hosted by the Rhode Division of Developmental Disabilities will be Monday, March 22, from 3 to 4:30 pm, Advance registration is required with Advocates In Action, which is handling technology and logistics. Participants may register here.

RI Entrepreneur With Autism Competing in FedEx Contest

• Michael Coyne, owner of Red, White, & Brew Coffeehouse in North Smithfield and a graduate of the business development program of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, is competing for a $50,000 grand prize in a nationwide small business contest sponsored by FedEx. Your vote will help get Michael to the next level!

  He is featured in an article in RI News Today, which also includes a link for voting.

New Olmstead Consent Decree Coordinator To Guide Court-Ordered ADA Compliance in RI

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island is looking for someone to coordinate its compliance with a 2014 federal civil rights agreement affecting adults with developmental disabilities – for the sixth time in as many years.

The state created the position of Consent Decree Coordinator at the insistence of an independent court monitor who wanted someone with the clout to break through the “silos” of three departments of state government and hammer out an integrated response to the compliance steps in the agreement.

Since the spring of 2019, the position has been filled by Brian Gosselin, the Deputy Secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and its former Chief Strategy Officer.

Brian Gosselin

His tenure has been marked by controversy that has included a dispute – or misunderstanding, as Gosselin put it- over the independence of a community organization which was settled only by a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Members of the community organization, the Employment First Task Force, have more recently described Gosselin’s consent decree work as “invisible.”

Now the state is under a court-ordered timeline to implement sweeping changes and it has decided to seek an independent contractor, reporting to Claire Richards, Governor Gina Raimondo’s Executive Counsel, to become the consent decree coordinator.

Louis DiPalma

The move won kudos from State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, the General Assembly’s most prominent watchdog on services for adults with developmental disabilities.

“I applaud the state, specifically Governor Raimondo, for elevating the position, by having the CDC (consent decree coordinator) report directly to her office, independent of any state agency,” DiPalma said in a statement.

However, Kerri White, Director of Public Affairs for EOHHS, said that the new consent decree coordinator will not be the first to report to the Governor’s Executive Counsel.

“The new Consent Decree Coordinator will continue to work with the established EOHHS, BHDDH, DHS and RIDE team but will have an avenue of escalation through the Governor’s Executive Counsel in order to maintain the compliance momentum achieved through the previous Consent Decree Coordinator,” White said in a statement.

She referred to the agencies involved in the state’s combined consent decree response, including the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), the Department of Human Services (DHS), and the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), as well as the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, which supervisory authority over BHDDH and DHS.

White said both Gosselin and the first coordinator, Andrew McQuaide, have reported to Claire Richards.

Midway through McQuaide’s tenure, his position in the bureaucratic heirarchy was lowered, when he was transferred to BHDDH. Three successive coordinators, Mary Madden, Dianne Curran, and Tina Spears, all worked from EOHHS.

Madden, who succeeded McQuaide, and Curran, who followed Madden, both had “substantial interaction” with Claire Richards, White said. Spears succeeded Curran. Gosselin, who by that time had twice served as interim coordinator, took over from Spears.

The appointment of Gosselin as coordinator in 2019 sparked criticism in the community, most notably from DiPalma, who said the choice of a salaried employee with loyalties to the state posed a conflict of interest.

“If you’re working for the state, I don’t know how you work for the 4,000 people” the consent decree seeks to protect, DiPalma said.

At the time, an EOHHS spokesman said Gosselin would bring “stability” to the coordinator’s job, and the state’s principal lawyer for the consent decree case said it was immaterial, legally, whether the consent decree coordinator was a state employee or an independent contractor.

DiPalma agreed that stability was critical but said “no rationale has been given for why we have had five coordinators in the last five years.”

Later in 2019, members of the Employment First Task Force, a community-based advisory organization created by the consent decree as a bridge between the public and government, told the DOJ about a disagreement with Gosselin.

They said Gosselin had attempted to curb the group’s contacts with the DOJ unless a particular outreach attempt had state approval. The matter escalated, until the DOJ sent a letter to the state’s lawyers that clearly underscored the independence of the Task Force.

DOJ lawyers said they hoped the situation was indeed a misunderstanding, as asserted by the state. The letter went on to say that members of the Task Force are “independent stakeholders with a role in the successful implementation of the consent decree.”

“Indeed, any limitation on open communication would undermine the intended autonomy of the Task Force,” the DOJ letter said.

Until a few days ago, Nov. 17, it was not clear that the state was, in fact, looking for a new consent decree coordinator to succeed Gosselin.

Earlier in November, a BHDDH spokesman said that the state had not advertised for a consent decree coordinator but had sent out a posting to state-contracted temporary staffing agencies for “temporary project management support” to “help organize our pathway to 2024”. That is the year the consent decree is scheduled to expire, assuming full compliance is achieved. The opening was advertised from Oct. 19 to Nov. 9, a BHDDH spokesman said.

“The State recognizes and appreciates Brian Gosselin’s great work on the consent decree and the many other projects that he oversees in his role as Deputy Secretary & Chief Operating Officer for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services,” said the BHDDH spokesman, Randal Edgar.

“Our team structure will remain in place and our key points of contact for the Court Monitor and the Community will remain unchanged,” he said.

“The State team values all of the stakeholder partnerships and recognizes the need for responsiveness to stakeholder concerns,” Edgar said.

The project management job description appeared to be very similar, if not identical, to that of the consent decree coordinator.

After requests for clarification from Developmental Disability News, White, the EOHHS spokeswoman, said that to eliminate any confusion, the state planned to re-post the position with the title of Consent Decree Coordinator.

“Since we are using a staffing agency to hire the Coordinator, we were limited to a prescribed list of job titles from the third-party staffing search agency. We understand this has caused confusion,” White said in an email.

White said the staffing agency that provides the successful candidate will pay the new consent decree coordinator and then bill the state. The budget for the consent decree coordinator is $100,000 a year. That allocation has not been used since Gosselin was appointed consent decree coordinator. Gosselin makes $146,655 as deputy secretary of EOHHS, according to state payroll data.

He will remain in the coordinator’s post during the transition, White said.

DOJ And RI Can't Agree On Next Consent Decree Monitor; Judge McConnell To Decide

By Gina Macris

For more than four months, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the state of Rhode Island have been unable to agree on a new monitor of the state’s compliance with a 2014 civil rights consent decree affecting adults with developmental disabilities.

The stalemate now leaves the choice to U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., who will consider apparent differences between the DOJ and the state over the extent of the monitor’s authority in making his selection. McConnell must choose from up to six candidates – a maximum of three names submitted by each side.

In the absence of a monitor, whose duties include mediation of disputes, a disagreement simmered between the state’s consent decree coordinator and an Employment First Task Force. The argument, concerning the the independence of the task force, escalated to the point of prompting a letter from the DOJ to the state’s lawyers.

The monitor’s job became vacant with the retirement of Charles Moseley, who notified all concerned on July 9 that because of health concerns, he would step down effective Sept. 30.

The state and the DOJ had 30-days to agree on a replacement once Moseley gave his notice, according to the consent decree. After 30 days, the decree says, the judge makes the selection from the candidates submitted by the two sides.

McConnell initially set a deadline of Sept. 30 for the two sides to conclude discussions, but at the end of September, he extended the deadline to Nov. 25, requiring the DOJ and the state to check in with him every two weeks on the progress in talks.

Earlier this month, he asked the two sides to submit statements on their respective views of the role of the consent decree monitor. That deadline also was extended, from Nov. 19 to Nov. 22.

The statements appear similar in many details but suggest that the DOJ envisions greater independence for the monitor than does the state. The DOJ has asked for a phone conference with the state and the judge on the matter of the monitor’s selection.

During the time there’s been no monitor, comparatively small differences between the state’s consent decree coordinator and an Employment First Task Force (EFTF) have coalesced into a dispute over the independence of the Task Force that reached the ears of the DOJ in at least one telephone call.

The EFTF was created by the consent decree to serve as a community-based advisory group to the state, the monitor, and the court. Its members are drawn from many non-profit organizations working to improve the quality of life of adults with developmental disabilities, as well as representation from those receiving services and their families. .

The flap appears to finally have been settled with a Nov. 13 letter from the DOJ to the private lawyers representing the state in the consent decree, Marc DeSisto and Kathleen Hilton.

The letter said EFTF members informed the DOJ that the state’s consent decree coordinator, Brian Gosselin, has told the task force not to communicate with the DOJ without Rhode Island’s oversight.

Gosselin, queried briefly by Developmental Disability News after an EFTF meeting Nov. 19, which he attended with Kathleen Hilton, one of the state’s consent decree lawyers, said it was a “genuine misunderstanding.”

The DOJ said in its letter that it hoped it indeed was a misunderstanding that was at the heart of the disagreement:

“We hope that there is simply a misunderstanding or miscommunication here, as such an instruction would be inconsistent with the role of the Task Force as set out in the Consent Decree,” wrote DOJ. While the consent decree required the state to create the task force,” the letter said, the consent decree ”does not contemplate that the State will supervise its work, dictate its findings, or limit its communications. The Task Force’s members are independent stakeholders whose role is to assist in successful implementation of the Consent Decree, including by providing recommendations to the Monitor and State officials.”

“Indeed, any limitation on open communication would undermine the intended autonomy of the Task Force. We ask Rhode Island to help ensure that the channels of communication between the Employment First Task Force, the United States, and the Monitor are uninhibited,” the letter said. It was signed by trial attorneys Jillian Lenson, Victoria Thomas and Nicole Kovite Zeitler.

The letter was not discussed at the most recent EFTF meeting, but there appeared to be some tension between Gosselin and members of the task force around a discussion that began with EFTF questions about the details of the state’s latest quarterly compliance report and ended with the state’s own questions about ways the task force could do more to work in the field to present the benefits of employment.

Members of the task force indicated they do what they can in the community, but added that they are a group of volunteers, most of them with full time jobs. (Some of them are also family members with responsibilities for individuals with special needs.) Task force members emphasized the advisory nature of the committee, echoing the DOJ letter.

If a monitor were in place, he or she might be expected to mediate differences between the consent decree coordinator and the EFTF before they got the point of requiring a lawyer’s letter from one side to the other. In fact, the consent decree explicitly authorizes the monitor to mediate, although the monitor’s recommendations for settling disputes are not binding, unless they happen to overlap with requirements of the consent decree, according to the DOJ.

As to the monitor’s powers, one of the main points made by the DOJ is its view that the monitor is not bound by the preferences of the state or the DOJ, unless the preferences are also required by the consent decree itself. By the same token, the state is not bound by the DOJ’s preferences and vice-versa, according DOJ view.

The state does not spell out that distinction between either sides’s preferences s the requirements of the consent decree. The differences between the DOJ and the state are highlighted in red or blue type in a in an extra document submitted to McConnell by the federal government.

In the highlighted document, the two sides differ on the monitor’s independence in evaluating situations in which there is a change in the relevant facts, like fluctuating numbers of people in the consent decree “target populations”, or subgroups, who are required to be placed in jobs in the community. (There are four “target populations,” depending on whether or not individuals ever were employees of a sheltered workshop or whether they were in high school or young adults at the time the consent decree was signed.)

If, for example, the number of target population members is lower than the number of target population members required to be placed in integrated employment, the state says that monitor will make recommendations or ask advice from the court on how to evaluate the state’s compliance in light of the changed numbers.

The DOJ, however, just asks that the monitor report the changed numbers to the court.. Its preferences would not put any qualifiers on the monitor’s authority to evaluate the new situation.

There is agreement that the annual budget for the court monitor, including expenses any consultants that may be hired, should not exceed $300,000, as required by the consent decree. The state pays the monitor.

But the DOJ points out that the consent decree allows the monitor to ask for increase that would exceed the $300,000 limit. The state’s document omits that point. Any expenditure over $300,000 would require approval by the state, according to the consent decree.

In many respects, the submissions by the state and the DOJ are identical.

Read the state’s view of the monitor’s role by clicking here.

Read the DOJ’s view of the monitor’s role by clicking here.

Read the DOJ comparison of the two documents by clicking here.

Views Differ On Role of State Coordinator In RI Olmstead Consent Decree Case

By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island General Assembly’s leading advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities says there’s an inherent conflict in a state employee also serving as state coordinator of the multi-agency efforts to comply with a 2014 civil rights consent decree.

“If you’re working for the state, I don’t know how you work for the 4,000 people” the consent decree seeks to protect, said state Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, who also chairs a special legislative commission studying Project Sustainability, the state’s fee-for-service reimbursement system for private providers of developmental disability services.

But the principal lawyer for the state in the consent decree case says that legally, it’s immaterial whether the consent decree coordinator is a state employee or an independent contractor. For many reasons, a state employee is the best choice at this stage of compliance, Marc DeSisto, the lawyer, said in a statement.

From 2016 until earlier this year, the consent decree coordinator, a position required by the agreement, was an independent contractor. The most recent contractor, Tina Spears, left the post in April. She was succeeded by Brian Gosselin, the Chief Strategy Officer for the Executive Office of Human Services (EOHHS.) Gosselin also continues to do his salaried job.

“The consent decree coordinator is a critical role in ensuring compliance with the consent decree and court orders. The responsibility includes coordinating across all state agencies,” DiPalma said in a recent telephone interview. “I don’t know how that’s done on a part time basis” by someone who also has another job.

Since the post was established in 2015 there have been five consent decree coordinators, including Gosselin, who has served as the interim coordinator twice.

In a statement, DeSisto said “the state as a whole is responsible for compliance, not a single coordinator.”

There is no legal impediment to a state employee serving as the coordinator, nor is there a requirement concerning the number of hours a week the coordinator must spend to fulfill those duties, DiSisto said.

“Over time and in recognition of the progress and evolving dynamics concerning compliance, we have refined the role of the coordinator to drive and coordinate the state’s ongoing compliance efforts,” he said.

An EOHHS spokesman said Gosselin was appointed because of his familiarity with the consent decree and because he would bring stability to the leadership of compliance efforts as the consent decree enters the second half of its 10-year span.

“The state cannot afford to have further turnover in the coordinator role,” David Levesque, the EOHHS spokesman said in an email, “especially during a time while there is going to be (a) Court Monitor transition.” Charles Moseley, the original monitor, has retired, and a new one has not yet been selected.

“A state employee is more likely to remain in this position than an independent contractor,” DeSisto said.

DiPalma agrees that “it’s critical that we have stability in that (coordinator’s) position, but no rationale has been given for why we have had five coordinators in the last five years. Without that information, I don’t know that the coordinator we have now is going to last any longer,” he said. He said his comments did not reflect any judgment of Gosselin.

Levesque, the EOHHS spokesman, said, “EOHHS is fortunate to be able to tap someone of Brian’s skill set and experience, particularly his intimate knowledge of the consent decree process in Rhode Island.”

He and DeSisto each said that the U.S. Department of Justice and Moseley, then the monitor, agreed to Gosselin’s appointment.

Gosselin will continue to be paid $117,482 a year as chief strategy officer, Levesque said, and has a team of staffers to support him in that role.

The independent contractors in the job, Mary Madden, Dianne Curran, and Spears, each made $100,000 a year.

Madden’s and Curran’s contracts said they each had the “full authority” of the Governor and the Secretary of EOHHS to oversee and coordinate compliance efforts in all state agencies

Beginning in December, 2018, changes in Spears’ job description and her contract suggest that her role might have become more circumscribed.

In December, the job description was amended to require the coordinator to make “weekly written reports to management team and EOHHS leadership team detailing coordination progress, achievements, challenges and upcoming milestones.”

Two other changes in the job description called for the coordinator to use a “mutually agreed upon escalation protocol to swiftly address issues of concern” and to use a “state approved communications and engagement plan when representing the state at public events and with stakeholders.”

The coordinator was to have a “designated team member” in each of the three primary agencies responsible for consent decree compliance as a point of contact for responding to “issues and concerns.” And the coordinator was required to include a “management team member” on all email communications related to the three respective agencies. The three agencies are the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals; the Office of Rehabilitation Services (part of the Department of Human Services) and the Rhode Island Department of Education.

At the end of Spears’ one-year contract in January, 2019, it was amended to include the revised job description and extended six months, to June 30, 2019.

Spears, who is now executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), a trade association of private service providers, offered her perspective on how the job description changed.

Spears, interviewed in August, said the consent decree coordinator has a unique role in coordinating activities among three separate state agencies to advance compliance with the consent decree, and there is a “natural tug-and-pull kind of dynamic” that can run in several directions.

“There were times when that (tug and pull) became challenging. I’m also the kind of person who’s pretty direct about what I expect and when it becomes challenging I usually address it. So we worked on agreement on how to develop a communications strategy” and a protocol to follow when there was disagreement, she said.

The job at the CPNRI became open when the former director, Donna Martin, announced her departure effective March 1. Spears said the new job was an opportunity to be a leader in systems change “in a way that really elevates our mission, elevates our voice, and elevates our practices.”

Spears, who has parented a child with extensive disabilities and medical issues, has worked at the Rhode Island Parent Information Network as a peer family mentor and government lobbyist. She also has worked as an analyst in the Senate Fiscal Office, where she said she learned about the consent decree and found her calling at the policy level. She left the Senate job to become consent decree coordinator in January, 2018.

RI Consent Decree Coordinator, Tina Spears, To Lead CPNRI, Private Provider Trade Association

Tina Spears * Photo Courtesy CPNRI

By Gina Macris

Tina Spears, who for 16 months has served as Rhode Island’s coordinator for state compliance with a 2014 federal civil rights consent decree affecting adults with developmental disabilities, has resigned to accept a position as executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI).

Spears’ last day at the Executive Office of Health and Human Services will be Friday, April 12, according to EOHHS spokesman David Levesque.

Spears has broad experience with issues involving developmental disabilities as a parent, advocate and policy maker, emphasizing the importance of the “consumer voice” throughout all her work, according to a statement from a CPNRI spokesman.

Before joining EOHHS as the state’s consent decree coordinator – a position required by the 2014 agreement between the state and the U.S. Department of Justice - she worked as a fiscal analyst for the state Senate, specializing in human service issues.

Spears also has provided direct support for families as a former government relations director of the Rhode Island Parent Information Network.

CPNRI Board members “were pleased to choose Tina from a pool of highly qualified applicants due to her significant experience advocating for people with disabilities and having worked effectively inside and outside state government,” the Board president, Gloria Quinn, said in a statement.

“We are excited to work with Tina as she leads CPNRI through a pivotal moment” in the transformation of the state’s privately-run service system for adults facing intellectual and developmental challenges, said Quinn. She is executive director of West Bay Residential Services, one of 22 private service agencies that make up CPNRI.

Quinn said members of CPNRI “are confident she will take our association to its next level of impact,” resulting in an improved quality of life for adults with developmental disabilities in Rhode Island.

Spears succeeds Donna Martin, who had served as CPNRI’s executive director from 2005 until March 1.

“The state thanks Tina for her commendable service” as consent decree coordinator, “and we look forward to working with Tina in her new position,” Levesque, the EOHHS spokesman, said in a statement.

Brian Gosselin, the chief strategy officer at EOHHS, will serve as the interim consent decree coordinator while the state searches for a permanent successor to Spears, Levesque said. It will be Gosselin’s second stint as interim coordinator.

“The state values the critical role the consent decree coordinator plays in the success of compliance activities of state agencies” in connection to the consent decree, Levesque said.

Counting Gosselin, there have been five consent decree coordinators since the agreement was signed April 8, 2014 and went into effect the following day.

Tina Spears, RI Senate Fiscal Aide, Named State's Consent Decree Coordinator

By Gina Macris

Tina Spears              photo courtesy state of RI  

Tina Spears, a policy analyst in the fiscal office of the Rhode Island Senate, has been named the state’s Consent Decree Coordinator. The coordinator is charged with ensuring cooperation among three departments of state government responsible for reinventing daytime services for teenagers and adults with developmental disabilities to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

Eric Beane, Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced Spears’ appointment Jan. 12, saying in a statement that she is “well-poised to lead this work, given her longstanding advocacy for children and individuals with disabilities.”

Spears, who has parented a child with a disability, “brings a strong personal commitment to the work” in addition to professional expertise in the state budget and the federal-state Medicaid program which funds developmental disability services, Beane said.

“Her connection to the community and passion for ensuring people have the opportunity to live their life to its fullest potential are welcome additions to the work our team does every day to improve developmental disabilities services in Rhode Island,” Beane said.

Prior to her Senate job, she was government relations director of the Rhode Island Parent Information Network for eight years.

Spears, the fourth consent decree coordinator in three years, succeeds Dianne Curran, who served just seven months before stepping down in September. Curran was preceded by Mary Madden, who stayed in the job a year, from 2016 until 2017, and by Andrew McQuaide, the first coordinator.

In the last several months. Brian Gosselin, Chief Strategic Officer for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, has been filling in as consent decree coordinator.

The state created the coordinator’s position at the insistence of a federal court monitor overseeing implementation of a 2014 consent decree, which maps out what the state must do to correct the overreliance on sheltered workshops and segreated programs that violated the integration mandate of the ADA. The consent decree draws its authority from the Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which clarified the requirement for integrated services for individuals with disabilities.

Dianne Curran, RI Consent Decree Coordinator, To Leave Post Sept. 30, Citing Personal Reasons

By Gina Macris

                                                       This article has been updated .

Dianne Curran                        Photo By Anne Peters

Dianne Curran will step down Sept. 30 after seven months as Rhode Island’s consent decree coordinator, a post considered critical to success of the state’s 2014 agreement with the U.S Department Of Justice to reform Rhode Island’s programs for persons with developmental disabilities.

 “I am sad to leave such a competent and hard-working team that is committed to improving the lives of individuals with I/DD (intellectual and developmental disabilities),”  Curran said in a statement which cited "personal reasons" for her departure. She did not elaborate.

Curran is the third consent decree coordinator to serve since the agreement was signed in April, 2014. Curran was preceded by Mary Madden, who served from January, 2016, until the end of March of this year, overlapping Curran’s first month on the job. The first consent decree coordinator was Andrew McQuaide.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) said there is an interim plan to cover the duties of the consent decree coordinator. The spokeswoman, Jenna Mackevich, confirmed Curran's upcoming departure on behalf of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), where Curran reports to Health and Human Services Secretary Eric J. Beane.

Until the state finds a qualified successor to Curran, an cross-agency Consent Decree Management Team will shoulder the coordinator's duties, according to an EOHHS spokeswoman, who elaborated on the interim plan. The inter-agency team includes various division leaders and legal staff, who meet regularly, said the spokeswoman, Ashley O'Shea.

The position of the consent decree coordinator is very important in ensuring cooperation among state agencies with responsibilities in implementing the agreement, according to an independent federal court monitor, Charles Moseley. Historically, the various agencies of state government have had the reputation of acting as bureaucratic “silos.”

In addition to BHDDH, the Rhode Island Department of Education and the Office of Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Human Services share responsibility for transforming a system of sheltered workshops and adult day care centers into a network of integrated, community-based services, with an emphasis on regular jobs and personal choice, to comply with the ADA.

With Madden’s arrival early in 2016, Moseley successfully pressed the state to move the position of consent decree coordinator out of BHDDH to the EOHHS, which has authority over both ORS and BHDDH.

Curran has a long and varied career as a disability rights lawyer dating back to 1980, both in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She is a former deputy director at Rhode Island Legal Services and former supervising attorney at what is now the RI Disability Law Center. Working much of the last 20 years in  Massachusetts,  she was deputy general counsel in the Department of Social Services and then held the same position at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

This article has been updated to include details of the interim plan for the state to keep up with the duties of the consent decree coordinator while the state searches for a replacement to Dianne Curran.

DD Service Provider Takes 'Wait and See' Attitude on Budget, Citing History of Disappointment

By Gina Macris

Until Rhode Island’s appropriation for developmental disabilities is released to the agency that administers it, the amount of money that is finally approved by the General Assembly will be  “just a number,” according to a member of the Employment First Task Force who follows legislative affairs.

photo by anne peters 

Tom Kane, (left), CEO of AccessPoint RI, a provider of developmental disability services, said that in the past several years, there have been three unsuccessful attempts to raise the pay of support staff for adults with developmental disabilities.

All the extra money, between $4 million and $9 million in a single fiscal year, has gone instead to fill a structural deficit in the budget of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), Kane said.

On Wednesday, June 15, the House is expected to vote on an appropriation that would add $9.1 million for raises for about 4000 workers and create a new reimbursement method for some two dozen agencies providing most of the direct services for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities.(

The budget proposal voted out of the House Finance Committee, however, does not include Governor Gina Raimondo’s request for $5.8 million for a caseload increase.

Kane indicated that amount of money could also represent the structural deficit in the next fiscal year's developmental disability budget. BHDDH officials say the deficit averages $4.6 a year.

Based on past experience, the money set aside for raises could once again be reserved to fill the deficit, Kane told the group.

The Employment First Task Force was created by a 2014 federal consent decree to serve as a bridge between the community and state governmental agencies that administer developmental disability services. The decree resulted from a federal investigation that found Rhode Island’s sheltered workshops violated the the integration mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act., clarified in the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mary Madden, the state’s consent decree coordinator, said, “People at the General Assembly are not into the consent decree at all.”

They don’t understand why developmental disability services cost so much, she said,  because they don’t understand “what it is to provide support 24 hours a day.”

Whatever figure is adopted – the current proposal has a bottom line of about $246 million dollars – the U.S. Department of Justice and an independent court monitor will review it. If either of them has the opinion it is not enough for the state to comply with the consent decree, they could ask the judge in the case to hold a show-cause hearing as to why the state should not be held in contempt.  

Charles Williams to Retire; Second RI Developmental Disabilities Official to Announce Departure

By Gina Macris

Williams                                          Image courtesy BHDDH

Charles Williams, Director of the Division of Disabilities of the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), confirmed today (June 3) that he will retire July 22.

 Williams is the second high-profile figure within BHDDH to announce his departure in two days. On June 2, the department director, Maria Montanaro, announced her resignation effective June 24. 

Williams, who joined BHDDH in 2005, said he had always planned to remain in state government for ten years, long enough to become vested in the state pension system. Williams marked his 10th anniversary in state government last October and celebrated his 71st birthday in January. 

In a telephone interview, Williams said that his retirement has nothing to do with either the federal government’s ongoing intervention in daytime programs for adults with developmental disabilities or the recent death of a resident in a group home that is both licensed and run by the state. 

He said the department plans to hire a chief operating officer and an employment specialist to fill out an administrative team in the developmental disabilities unit. Those moves, he contended, will help ensure continuity as BHDDH complies with a 2014 federal consent decree. 

Another position created by BHDDH to respond to the consent decree is that of chief transformation officer. 

Reached by phone, Andrew McQuaide, the transformation officer, declined any comment on whether he will stay with the department. 

BHDDH must comply with a series of strict deadlines in the coming months to start helping more persons with intellectual or developmental disabilities find regular jobs and enjoy activities in their communities, or face possible contempt hearings in U.S. District Court over violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. 

Title II of the ADA, reaffirmed by the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, is a sweeping mandate requiring states to offer services to people with intellectual or developmental disabilities in the least restrictive environment appropriate for each individual.  

The developmental disabilities division also faces scrutiny of 25 group homes that are both licensed and run by BHDDH. In addition to supervising the developmental disabilities division, Williams heads the residential unit, called Rhode Island Community Living and Supports (RICLAS.) 

A native of Connecticut, Williams had worked as head of preventive services in mental health, behavioral healthcare and developmental disabilities for the state of Missouri before coming to BHDHHD to take a similar position.  

Montanaro put Williams in charge of developmental disabilities when she became Department director, in February, 2015, but did not select a new chief for RICLAS. 

Since early April, it has become evident that Jennifer Wood, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, has taken the lead on the state’s response to the consent decree, providing much of the state’s testimony during a day-long evidentiary hearing on compliance issues in U.S. District Court. 

More recently, when state Senator Louis DiPalma (D-Newport, Middletown, Tiverton and Little Compton) asked for information about BHDDH, he said he was invited to a meeting hosted by Wood; transformation officer McQuaide; the Consent Decree Coordinator, Mary Madden; and Dacia Reed, policy director of the Rhode Island Children’s Cabinet. 

Madden’s job was created at the insistence of the court monitor in the federal case as a secretary-level position with authority to enforce cooperation among three agencies responsible for compliance with the consent decree. Madden reports to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Elizabeth Roberts, who is also head of the Children’s Cabinet, which was revived by Governor Gina Raimondo in 2015. 

The Children’s Cabinet has an interest in the consent decree because the decree is designed to protect teenagers with developmental disabilities as well as adults. Teenagers often struggle with the transition from special education in high schools to the adult system of developmental disability services. 

Asked about Wood’s future role in connection with developmental disabilities, a spokeswoman for EOHHS issued this statement today: 

“We remain fully committed to meeting the goals of the Consent Decree to provide integrated, community based services for Rhode Islanders living with developmental disabilities. Compliance with the Consent Decree has improved significantly under Director Montanaro’s tenure, and EOHHS Deputy Secretary Jennifer Wood will continue to work with Secretary Roberts and the team at BHDDH, under the leadership of Interim director Becky Boss, to ensure all requirements are met going forward. 

Additionally, Governor Raimondo has included significant funding in her proposed budget, including investments in integrated services. In the weeks ahead, Director Montanaro is committed to working with leaders in the General Assembly to secure the additional funding that Governor Raimondo has recently advocated for to provide higher-quality services for Rhode Islanders living with developmental disabilities.”