RI House Gives Extra Bump To Pay Of Front Line DD Workers As Budget Deliberations Near End

By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island House has added a total of $9.6 million in federal-state Medicaid funding to boost the pay of direct care workers for adults with developmental disabilities in the state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The increase, awaiting approval by the Senate, represents the largest single-year investment in wages since drastic cuts were made in 2011. In 2016, the legislature earmarked $5 million for a rate hike, and the next year it added $6.1 million.

But the rates for Rhode Island’s direct care workers still lag behind those of neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts.

This year’s wage hike is was part of an overall $296.9 million allocation for developmental disabilities, which includes $13 million in federal Medicaid reimbursement to create a third-party case management initiative called a Health Home.

In an unusual Saturday session June 22, the House also addressed a shortfall in the current developmental disabilities budget, adding $2.9 million in supplemental funding.

Developmental disability services encompass both the private system serving about 4,000 clients and a state-operated network of group homes for about 125 individuals, accounting for more than half the spending in the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH). The House-authorized spending cap for BHDDH in the next budget is $463.2 million.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello explained a floor amendment that raised the total earmarked for a wage increase in Governor Gina Raimondo’s budget from $6.4 million to $9.6 million.

Larry Berman said the governor’s $6.4 million, including $3 million in state funding and $3.4 million in federal reimbursements, will mean a 41-cent raise to the hourly rate for direct support workers on July 1. The hourly rate, which he put at an average of $12.27, would rise to $12.68, Berman said.

The additional $3.2 million in the floor amendment, including $1.5 in state revenue, will be applied Oct. 1, triggering an additional wage hike of 41 cents an hour, for a total hourly rate of $13.09 during the last nine months of the fiscal year, Berman said.

In the past, increases for direct care workers have meant that supervisors and other support personnel have also received raises. But Berman confirmed that this year, the allocation earmarked for pay bumps apply only to front-line caregivers. In all, about 4,000 work in the private sector in the field of developmental disability services.

Berman’s figures refer to the basic hourly wage rate in the BHDDH reimbursement model for private providers, but that doesn’t mean each direct care worker will get the increase he cited.

Many variables exist in the way each of the providers figures out how much to pay workers and how much to set aside for benefits and other employer-related expenses. All that means that the amount of the actual wage hikes will vary.

In the past, the state and the private providers have differed on how far a rate hike will go.

In a statement, Mattiello took credit for redirecting additional funds to direct care workers.

“When about $1 million was identified as available in the budget, I suggested it go to those workers who are providing outstanding care to the developmentally disabled community. They deserve this rate increase.”

The Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, (CPNRI) a trade association of about two dozen providers, posted its thanks on Facebook:

“CPNRI is pleased to see the commitment of the Speaker, Senate President and Governor and all the Representatives and Senators who have supported increased wages for DD workers in Rhode Island in the 2020 budget. This investment not only will raise wages for this invaluable workforce, it supports individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to lead meaningful lives in our communities. Thank you to all who have prioritized this workforce.”

The wage increase is assured passage in the Senate, where developmental disability services have the support of the leadership, including Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio, William J. Conley, Jr., Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; and Sen. LouisA. DiPalma, first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

The extra push in funding occurred just as Mattiello sought to tamp down a controversy involving a Cranston chiropractor, who was to receive a $1 million authorization to bill the state for services for an unproven neurological treatment for traumatic head injury and other disorders that failed to qualify for federal Medicaid reimbursement..

On June 20, Mattiello announced he would pull the $1 million in funding from Victor Pedro, because the issue had become too controversial and he wanted to avoid a lengthy floor battle, even though he still supported the chiropractor.

Berman said most of the last-minute $1.5 million-increase in worker wages came from the allocation that Mattiello pulled from the chiropractor, along with funds from various other accounts.

Spending for already-established developmental disability programs and services from all revenue sources in the next fiscal year would be capped at $284 million – about $12.3 million more than originally approved for the current fiscal year. Most of that figure comes from the federal-state Medicaid program.

Meanwhile, the House approved a revised developmental disabilities budget of slightly over $274.6 million for the current fiscal year, which is $2.9 million more than the $271.7 million the General Assembly enacted a year ago.

The revised figure includes about $1.7 million in state revenue that represents an adjustment for an audit finding that the state was incorrectly leveraging federal Medicaid money to pay for fire code upgrades in group homes and other facilities serving adults with developmental disabilities, Berman said. Capital projects are now all assigned to the Department of Administration, he said.

Without supplemental funding and savings in other BHDDH accounts, the cost of services in the privately-run developmental disability system would have exceeded the amount the General Assembly originally allocated by about $3.8 million in General revenue.

A third-quarter spending report prepared by BHDDH said that the total state share of Medicaid-funded direct services in the private system is projected at about $111.4 million by June 30. The enacted budget for the current fiscal year allows $107.6 million in that category, but the supplemental funding recommended by the Governor and approved by the House reduces the projected shortfall in state funds to about $152,000, when combined with savings in other accounts.

In the third-quarter spending report for the current fiscal year, BHDDH officials project about a 1.5 percent increase in overall caseload growth and a $1.5 million increase in supplemental funding to clients who successfully appeal the individual amounts allocated for their services.

Counting all the Governor’s proposed supplemental funding for BHDDH in all three divisions, as well as savings in some budget line items, the department projected a year-end surplus of about $438,000 as of March 31.

Advocates: RI Must Put Higher Value On DD Workforce To Ensure Stability In Client Services

Image courtesy of RI Capitol TV

By Gina Macris

The incremental pay increase that Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo proposes for those who care for adults with developmental disabilities- about 34 to 41 cents an hour - is “much appreciated,” Tom Kane, CEO of AccessPoint RI, told the House Finance Committee recently.

But “it’s not enough,” Kane added quickly.

Entry-level workers making an average of $11.44 an hour, or more experienced colleagues paid an average of $12.50 an hour, are “often helping a person eat, shower, use the bathroom, or they could be helping someone learn how to drive their car,” Kane said.

“It is a completely and utterly important job, but based on the funding available, it is not really valued by our state,” Kane continued.

“ I’ve said this in this room a number of times. A budget is a statement of values, and what we’re saying is that this work isn’t worth enough money to make a living.”

To illustrate his point, Kane told Finance Committee members that he searched for jobs on the website Indeed.com to prepare for his testimony March 13 and found a posting from a kennel seeking someone to clean cages for $14 an hour.

“Not that I would disparage any job that anyone would have,” Kane said. “I think there should be dignity in all work. I think as a society we have to say, for those who care and support the people to live in the community, to try to have the best life possible, we need to fund the agencies to pay a reasonable rate.”

Kane spoke from the perspective of some three dozen private service providers in Rhode Island, the core of the state’s developmental disability service system. These agencies are trying to make ends meet while dealing with high job turnover and high vacancy rates, as well as the costly overtime it requires to ensure the safety of the vulnerable people in their care.

In the context of the state’s fee-for-service Medicaid reimbursement system, now in its eighth year, the concerns of the providers converge with those of a 2014 federal consent decree which spells out the civil rights of people who, through an accident of birth, spend a lifetime trying each day to rise to the challenge of diverse disabilities.

And in the past year, there has been growing pressure for change, both from those overseeing the implementation of the consent decree and from an expanding chorus of advocates.

In a “Week of Action” planned by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI) March 26 through 28, providers and their supporters, including consumers and their families, will fan out under the State House rotunda to buttonhole individual legislators in the hours before the bell sounds shrilly at 4 p.m. calling the House and Senate to order.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo has proposed a $6.4 million budget increase targeted for pay raises, including $3 million in state revenue and $3.4 million in federal Medicaid funds. This sum would raise the wages of direct support workers by what state officials estimate as 43 cents an hour.

But the leaders of CPNRI and the Provider Council, another trade association, say that to stabilize the private system of developmental disability services, providers need about $28.5 million in state revenue, which would generate a roughly equal amount in federal Medicaid payments.

“We recognize that this is a substantial amount of money, but it is a result of chronic underfunding,” said Donna Martin and Peter Quattromani in a letter to Raimondo dated Jan. 9. Until March, Martin was executive director of CPNRI. Quattromani, executive director of United Cerebral Palsy of Rhode Island, represented the Provider Council.

Their reference to “chronic underfunding” alludes to “Project Sustainability,” the fee-for service funding model enacted by the General Assembly in 2011 with a $26-million budget cut. Project Sustainability was cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014 as contributing to a segregated system of services that violated the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

With the closing of the Ladd School in 1994, Rhode Island was once first in the nation in de-institutionalizing adults with developmental disabilities and its efforts to include former residents in everyday life in the community. Today, 25 years after the Ladd School was shuttered, Rhode Island is ranked 32nd among the states in its inclusion efforts by CPNRI’s national affiliate, the American Network of Community Options and Resources.

Project Sustainability is currently the subject of two separate reviews, one by a special legislative commission and another by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), which has hired a consultant to scrutinize both the reimbursement rates and the fee-for-service model itself.

Between 2011 and 2012, Project Sustainability exacerbated a downward trend in funding for developmental disabilities that eventually leveled off but has not caught up with the pace of inflation, despite budget increases in recent years, according to a ten-year analysis done by CPNRI. The study used state budget figures and consumer price index information kept by the state Department of Labor and Training.

Chart Courtesy of CPNRI

Low wages have put Rhode Island service providers at a disadvantage in trying to recruit a variety of personal care workers like those who work with adults with developmental disabilities, experts say.

CPNRI reports that about one in three workers leave a developmental disability job every year, mostly, they say, because they can’t pay their bills. One in five positions remain vacant, driving up the cost of overtime necessary to ensure the safety of the vulnerable people in care, according to the trade association.

PHI National, long-term care consultants, have produced a chart comparing the earnings of personal care workers in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts that shows Rhode Island with the lowest wages and the least buying power relative to the minimum wage.

chart courtesty of PHI and CPNRI

Policy experts say that basic demographic data for the nation indicates a shortage of personal care workers in the next few decades. That was one of the key messages delivered by Mary Lee Faye, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services, to the Project Sustainability study commission in January.

Meanwhile, the House Fiscal Office estimates that the governor’s proposed raise for front-line developmental disability workers would add add 41 cents to their average hourly wage, lifting it from $12.27 an hour to $12.68 an hour. The overall $6.4 million pay hike doesn’t include raises for supervisors or job development and support coordinators, the House Fiscal Advisor, Sharon Reynolds Ferland, has told the House Finance Committee.

Providers say the state’s estimates don’t match up with actual costs. The state funds 35 percent of overhead related to employment, including mandatory costs like health and dental insurance, workers compensation insurance, payroll taxes, paid time off and other items, according to a CPNRI policy paper.

In reality, providers say, these employee-related expenses cost 64 percent[1] of wages – a point CPNRI’s Martin and the Provider Council’s Quattromani made in their Jan. 9 letter to Raimondo.

Providers fill the gap between the available state and federal Medicaid funding and the actual costs of employee-related overhead by reducing the amount of the wage increase passed along to workers. Kane, in his testimony, said that for the lowest-paid direct care workers, Raimondo’s planned pay increase will not even cover the cost of a separate proposal she has made to increase the state’s minimum wage for all workers from $10.50 to $11.10.

In the last few years, individuals with developmental disabilities, their families, and providers have gained legislative advocates, most prominently Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, who is the first vice-president of the Senate Finance Committee.

DiPalma, as chairman of the special legislative commission studying Project Sustainability, convinced a consultant involved in developing that fee-for-service model to return to Rhode Island and testify about his work last November.

Mark Podrazik, a principal in the Arizona-based Burns & Associates, made it clear that Project Sustainability was shaped in a frantic effort to control costs.

Mark Podrazik * Photo By Anne Peters

The firm ultimately was paid a total of $1.4 million to develop Project Sustainability and monitor how it affected spending for developmental disabilities services. (The funding model contains no provisions for measuring the impact of services on individuals.)

Podrazik testified that some of Burn’s key recommendations were ignored, including a proposed base pay of $13.97 an hour for direct care workers that would increase within a year or two to $15 an hour. That was in 2011.

Today, eight years later, advocates are still chasing that $15-hour wage. About a month ago, DiPalma and Rep. Evan Shanley, D-Warwick, introduced companion bills to raise direct care workers’ pay to $15 an hour by July 1, 2020. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, William D. Conley, was among the co-sponsors of DiPalma’s bill.

More recently, DiPalma introduced a second bill that would require all private human service agencies under contract with the state to pay their employees at least 44 percent above the minimum wage at any given time. Both Conley and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio have signed on to this bill as co-sponsors.

A year ago at this time, Raimondo had proposed an $18.4 million cut in developmental disability services for reasons that were never spelled out in public. Raimondo rejected warnings of(BHDDH) that the move would result in waiting lists for services or cuts in programming.

The proposed cut appeared to be unacceptable to an independent court monitor who continues to oversee implementation of the 2014 consent decree. The agreement calls for integrated, community-based services that are inherently more costly than the facility-based system embedded in Project Sustainability.

In May, 2018, the monitor, Charles Moseley, obtained written assurances from Raimondo that she would continue to support the work of the consent decree, which in the moment meant restoring the almost all the $18-million cut.

In the courtroom, the judge who periodically oversees the status of the consent decree, John j. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court, has indicated his willingness to issue orders to ensure that specific goals of the consent decree are met. At the same time, he said he couldn’t order the state to spend a certain amount to achieve them.

Meanwhile, Moseley has continued to keep abreast of budget developments. In February he wrote McConnell, saying Raimondo’s proposed budget “appears adequate” to cover a deficit in the current fiscal year and fund the consent decree in the budget beginning July 1.

Without mentioning how the Governor may have calculated developmental disability budgets in the past, Moseley made a point of saying he has received assurances that the latest figures are based on real-time data about the projected use of developmental disability services.

The state’s lawyer, Marc DeSisto, has assured him that “the Governor’s recommended budget accepts the most up-to-date projections for financing the current costs of the system to ensure no changes for individuals with DD and continued commitment to achieving Consent Decree outcomes,” Moseley wrote the judge.

Moseley put the current working budget for the private system of developmental disability services at about $229.4 million. Raimondo’s proposal adds about $4 million to finish the current fiscal year, for a total of $233.4 million. Moseley said the increase includes:

· $1 million for the estimated growth in the number of people receiving services

· $1.3 million for increased costs of providing services

· $645,000 to compensate for unrealized savings in moving group home residents into less costly residential options

· $500,000 in other priorities.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, Moseley said, Raimondo would add about $7.3 million to the private developmental disability system, for a total of $240.2 million. That figure includes:

• $516,000 for continued growth in the number of people receiving services

• $2.7 million for increased costs in providing services.

• $6.4 million for the wage increase to direct care staff.

Those totals are offset by about $1.3 million in increased expectations for savings in residential costs and another million in savings from a reform initiative that didn’t start on time.

Moseley said all his figures were rounded off.

Deep in the background, BHDDH is quietly gearing up for a top-to-bottom analysis of Project Sustainability itself – a move applauded by DiPalma, providers, families and consumers. The lack of flexibility in services provided by Project Sustainability also has drawn the criticism of the court monitor.

Providers have said the funding formula does not allow them to plan on services for longer than three months at a time and makes it difficult for them to base their services in the community.

For example, Project Sustainability assigns staffing ratios according to the degree to which a person may be unable to do basic things independently, but doesn’t take into account the resources that person might need to get to a job – or hockey game – in the community.

Project Sustainability originally made it difficult for individuals to hold jobs in the community by providing work-related services only at the expense of other kinds of daytime supports.

In 2017, to comply with the work goals of the consent decree, BHDDH launched an add-on program of performance payments for providers for placing clients in community-based employment and for meeting job-retention goals.

DiPalma has said it is imperative that BHDDH finish a new rate model for private developmental disability services in time for Raimondo to introduce her budget to the General Assembly next January.

To satisfy the consent decree, the new design would have to focus on helping individuals lead regular lives in the community. Such a model would inevitably demand a greater financial commitment from the state and pose a new test of lawmakers’ values.

RI Speaker: General Assembly Likely To Reverse $18 M Cut In DD Services Proposed By Governor

By Gina Macris 

It is likely the General Assembly will restore about $18 million in proposed cuts to private providers of developmental disability services in the budget cycle that begins July 1,” Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello said May 10.

In a video interview published by GoLocal Prov, Mattiello said:

“We have about $18 million in proposed cuts to the developmentally disabled community. I don’t want to speak for everybody, but I’m certainly going to strongly advocate for giving the money back and restoring it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate place to go for your cuts. And we were always planning on restoring those funds. I think that thinking is pretty universal.”

Mattiello was interviewed at the conclusion of the May Revenue Estimating Conference, which indicated revenues are running about $130 million to $135 million ahead of estimates for the current fiscal year and the next one, according to slightly differing preliminary news reports.  An official statement was not immediately available.

A spokesman for Mattiello added that the “budget will be finalized in the coming weeks, and there are no firm numbers yet, but the Speaker is committed to addressing the developmental disabilities issue in the budget.”

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. William J. Conley,Jr., D-East Providence and Pawtucket, has taken a firm stand against the $18 million reduction in reimbursements to private providers proposed by Governor Gina Raimondo in January.

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing May 3, Conley framed the budgetary issue in terms of the civil rights of adults with developmental disabilities to have the assistance they need to enjoy services in their communities as spelled out in the Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

And that day for the first time, Rebecca Boss, director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals(BHDDH), acknowledged that governor’s recommended budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 would not allow the state to continue its compliance efforts with a 2014 federal consent decree based on the Olmstead decision.

For the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo has proposed $250.8 million for developmental disabilities. That figure is $6.1 million less than the bottom line enacted by the General Assembly for the current fiscal year and a total of $21.4 million less than current spending levels.  Raimondo’s budget proposal would raise the current spending limit from $256.9 million to $272.2 million for the fiscal year ending June 30 to cover a cost overrun, treating it as a one-time event.  

In the BHDDH budget request to the governor last fall, Boss asked for a total of $278.8 million for developmental disabilities beginning July 1.

U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., who presides over implementation of the consent decree, has made it clear over the last six months that he has a keen interest in the funding issue.

At the most court recent hearing April 10, an independent court monitor said he would draft recommendations for a proposed court order to ensure compliance with the consent decree

The monitor, Charles Moseley, was to first consult with the state and the U.S. Department of Justice to see if they could all reach consensus on the recommendations. Moseley’s report to the judge has not yet appeared in the court file.

But McConnell has received a letter from a parent asking him to “stop the governor’s plan to cut $18 million from I/DD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) services.”

Chris Torgovec has a son with autism who is living in a group home and has started to work a few hours a week “so he is doing well there, but I’m afraid of what could happen if these services would go away.

“It would not be a good thing for anyone. I’m sure there are other places to make cuts but not to people that actually need help, “ Torgovec said.

RI Senate Finance, BHDDH To Seek More Funding To Protect Services And Rights Of Adults with DD

By Gina Macris

Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed $18.4 million cut to developmental disability services for the next fiscal year would not allow Rhode Island to continue its compliance efforts in connection with a 2014 federal consent decree, Rebecca Boss acknowledged for the first time during a budget hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on May 3.  

Boss - RI CApitol tv

Boss is the highest ranking official in the Raimondo administration responsible for adults with developmental disabilities in her position as the director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).  

Her admission came in response to the finance committee chairman, Sen. William J. Conley, Jr., who laid out a detailed and persistent line of questioning that revealed an authoritative grasp of the issues of the the consent decree and established him as a leading advocate for expanding the developmental disabilities budget.  

Boss said in initial remarks that based on an “updated data analysis of monthly caseloads and more positive revenue trends, we will be advocating for increased funding for BHDDH so Rhode Islanders’ needs are met.”

Conley - RI CAPITOL TV 

But Conley asked her to revisit a specific question about funding that had first been posed to her by U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. during a hearing April 10. McConnell asked whether the proposed $18.4 million cut in reimbursements to private providers effective July 1 would affect the state’s ability to move forward with compliance efforts related to the consent decree.

At the time, Boss said BHDDH did not have enough data to give an answer.

Conley said the consent decree “does nothing more, quite frankly, than require the same standards that the U.S. Supreme Court established in 1999.”

The so-called Olmstead decision clarified the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act, spelling out the rights of all individuals with disabilities to choose services that are part of their communities.    

Nearly 20 years after the Olmstead decision, Rhode Island is “still struggling to meet a constitutional standard of care,” Conley said.

“Four years after the consent decree was entered and after repeated court monitor reports, we still cannot answer the question as to whether or not we are providing sufficient resources, really, to provide justice and dignity to the people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the state of Rhode Island.”

“While I understand you have to represent the voice of the administration, and everybody expects you to be a loyal soldier and team player, the budget that you are giving us doesn’t do that,” Conley said, addressing Boss.

Otherwise, Boss would have been able to clearly answer the judge that the loss of $18 million would not affect progress on the consent decree and would have been able to spell out how its goals would be achieved with the remaining funds, Conley said.

When Conley asked what the Senate Finance Committee could do to help BHDDH, Boss and the Director of Developmental Disabilities, Kerri Zanchi, both said members could advocate for more flexibility for the department to assign resources.

Boss said she agreed that the department needs more resources but wasn’t sure that the prescriptive nature of the consent decree was the best approach.

But Conley replied said that when the state isn’t meeting the standards, or doesn’t have the data to show its progress – a problem since 2014 – “the default position is prescriptive standards, because they need some kind of measuring stick.”

One measure is whether the “proposed budget would provide the level of services that are constitutionally mandated,” Conley said.

“What’s your answer today?” he asked, bringing the discussion full circle back to the judge’s question.  

Boss said, “With the revised analytics done, we could say today that the budget proposed would not continue the service delivery” in the current fiscal year.  The consent decree requires an increase in commitment during each year of implementation. equired by the consent decree.

While Boss did not offer a figure, Sen. Louis D. DiPalma, D-Middletown, the first vice-chairman of the committee, said developmental disabilities would need about $275 million to $280 million in federal and state funding during the next fiscal year, based on the original budget request the department made to the Governor’s office last fall.

DiPalma presented a chart showing that actual funding for developmental disabilities has lagged behind inflation since July 1, 2011, which marked the introduction of “Project Sustainability,” the current fee-for service reimbursement system that has come under increasing criticism for imposing restrictions on providers – and the state bureaucracy – in implementing the consent decree.

For example, the chart shows that the $239.8 million allocated for developmental disabilities effective July 1, 2010 would be the equivalent of $274.5 million allocated effective July 1, 2018, the start of the next fiscal year, with an adjustment for inflation according to the consumer price index.

Raimondo’s proposal, as it now stands, would allocate only $248.1 million effective July 1, counting only the federal-state Medicaid funding. (Other miscellaneous funds would add slightly more than $2 million to the bottom line.)

The Senate on May 1 gave final approval to a resolution creating a special commission to study the reimbursement system under Project Sustainability, including the use of a standardized assessment tool keyed to a funding formula that has never been disclosed. The commission has until March 1, 2019 to issue its report.

Sen. Walter S. Felag, Jr., D-Warren, Bristol and Tiverton, said he favors fully funding developmental disabilities.

He said it seems that in the last eight to ten years, there has been “tremendous pressure” to decrease these expenditures,” with particular challenges on residential costs from 2013 to 2017 as BHDDH has tried to move people out of group homes to less expensive shared living arrangements.  He questioned whether it has been all worthwhile.

Boss said there have been investments in developmental disabilities in that time, and Conley remarked that Boss and her staff are doing “tremendous work” with the resources they do have.

Beth Upham put a parent’s perspective on services. Her daughter, Stacy, a resident of a group home with an active calendar, “has a life we never could have given her,” she said.

She said she has met with Governor Raimondo, who has “promised she would support this community.”

But if the governor’s existing budget proposal is enacted, Upham said, “every person in the system will suffer. They will be sicker. There will be more hospitalizations. My daughter, my baby girl, will suffer,” Upham said.

“We have been fighting this system ever since she turned 21,” Upham said.

She asked, “why, for the last 15 years, has this community been targeted for cuts?”

RI Senate Would Require Governor's Workforce Board to Plan Jobs for Disabled

By Gina Macris

The Governor’s Workforce Board in Rhode Island would be required to include individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in its initiatives, policies and actions involving workforce development, under provisions of a bill that has passed the Senate.                                 

The legislation (2016-S 2476), introduced by Sen. William J. Conley, Jr., (D-East Providence and Pawtucket) also would add representatives of the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals to the Career Pathways Advisory Committee of the Governor’s Workforce Board.

Similar legislation (2016-H 8035) has been introduced in the Rhode Island House by Rep. Gregg Amore (D-East Providence). 

“This is an opportunity for us to transform our workforce systems in a planned fashion to transition adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities into community-integrated settings,” Conley said in a statement.  

In the last six months, the U.S. Department of Justice and an independent court monitor have  turned to the U.S. District Court for assistance in enforcing terms of a two-year-old consent decree in which Rhode Island agreed to stop violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by phasing out sheltered workshops that paid subminimum wages to adults with disabilities. 

In place of segregated employment and day programs, the state agreed to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities find and keep jobs in the community and participate in integrated non-work activities. 

Title II of the ADA, underscored by the so-called Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999,  in essence says that individuals with developmental disabilities have a right to live, work, and play in their communities, just like anyone else. 

“This bill affords individuals with disabilities the same access to job training and career opportunities as all other Rhode Islanders,” Conley said, acknowledging that the state “has done little to help the developmentally disabled find gainful employment.” 

The Governor’s Workforce Board is the primary policy-making body for workforce development issues in Rhode Island, with authority to allocate state Job Development Funds and federaltraining funds under provisions of Title I-B of the federal Workforce Investment Act.