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OMRDD
Keep quality public services at the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities!

Legislators: Think twice about "NY CARES."

Stop the Executive budget's proposed privatization of services to the mentally retarded and developmentally disabled. Instead, add resources to the state agency delivering these vital services.

Here are the facts:

• NYSCARES needs to be revised to give OMRDD clients a true choice by offering the choice of state-supported professional services. All of the proposed $24.6 million in state funds and $19 million in federal funds will go to privately-operated providers. This includes 4,900 new beds, 1,000 new day service opportunities, and a $1.3 million appropriation for new family support services.
  
• The dramatic expansion of services required under NYSCARES could be problematic if left entirely to private agencies. Private providers already have difficulty recruiting and retaining staff. Turnover rates in private agencies have been reported to be as high as 70%. Private providers can be decertified or go out of business, and sometimes practice "cherry picking" of less demanding clients, leaving consumers without necessary services.
  
• State operated services offer consistency, accountability, experience and reliability in the professional services that severely disabled consumers need. Parents on OMRDD's waiting list want the dependability of State rehabilitation specialists and physical therapists to provide continuity of care and treatment for their children.
  
• Despite NYSCARES' massive increase in funding and services, this budget does not provide additional funding for quality assurance. Without additional oversight, taxpayers have no guarantee that the new funding is appropriately spent and parents have no guarantee that necessary services are provided.
  
• The proposed privatization of pharmacy services will diminish services to the OMRDD population. Remote, automated private pharmacies that drop off medication cannot provide the highly specialized and accessible direct services to clients that OMRDD pharmacists deliver. OMRDD pharmacists do more than fill prescriptions for faceless customers ­ they provide service coordination, perform medication reviews, and participate in treatment, all with a unique knowledge of the effects of specialized medications without costing taxpayers more. And, they don't cost taxpayers any more than private pharmacists.
  
• The proposed privatization of physician services is wrongly characterized as a reduction of "excess" physician services. OMRDD doctors serve a medically demanding, aging, and highly specialized population whose needs (including 24-hour care) cannot be compared to private practice. It is inappropriate for clients in behavioral units and medically frail units to be transported for doctor visits.
  
  State-licensed Article 16 clinics are being expanded by contracting out to private agencies at a lower reimbursement rate. This is the equivalent of share-cropping for de-skilled, lower paid, ever-changing staff.
  
• Taxpayers will be supporting $10.6 million in capital funding in the Executive budget for privately owned and operated buildings. This is one more hidden cost of privatizing public services.
  
• The proposed elimination of six Institute for Basic Research positions demonstrates a lack of commitment to improve diagnostic understanding, treatment, and prevention of mental retardation and developmental disabilities. Private pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to devote research funds to finance orphan research on new drugs and genetic treatments that are unlikely to yield commercial profits. A $110,000 non-personal service cut will further impede research.
  
• The proposed elimination of the Youth Opportunity Program will deprive 64 high school students with disabilities of the chance to enhance the lives of other disabled individuals. The 345 disadvantaged high school students who participate in the YOP are provided valuable work experience while enhancing the lives of developmentally disabled clients whose treatment they assist.
  
• "Enhanced" direct care staff without enhanced professional staff means more custodial care, not more services. The special populations (forensics, medically frail, etc.) affected by this enhancement are those most in need of increased professional care by nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, physical and rehabilitation therapists, and other professionals.
  

This year, PEF urges state legislators to:

- Redirect at least half of NYSCARES funds to professional state-operated services to ensure true consumer choice.

- Restore funding for pharmacists and physicians to ensure quality professional services.

- Fill the six vacant positions at the Institute for Basic Research to ensure that important new drug and genetic treatments are pursued.

- Extend legislation to continue operation of the Youth Opportunity Program to maintain a pool of diverse and well-trained caregivers.

Keep quality services at the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities! Opportunity Program to maintain a pool of diverse and well-trained caregivers.

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Support Quality Services!


Say No to the Contracting Out of Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Homes and Programs!

Facts about Governor Pataki's "NY CARES" Proposal

On August 19, 1998 Governor Pataki proposed to provide a five-year, $225 million infusion of funding to assist developmentally disabled people and their families.

Here Are The Facts:

• "NY CARES" is an acronym for New York Creating Alternatives in Residential Environments and Services.
  
• If the NYS Legislature passes an annual allocation of $26 million in state tax money in each of the next five fiscal years, the Governor claims the OMRDD waiting list will be wiped out. (With matching Medicaid funding, $130 million in state tax funding would translate into $225 million over the 5-year period.)
  
• The proposed plan would provide:
  · Residential placement for 8,137 developmentally disabled people.
  · Family support services for 6,500 developmentally disabled people and their families.
  · Day program services and work-related opportunities for 950 developmentally disabled people.
  
• According to OMRDD, developmentally disabled people and their families would be offered choices in selecting service providers. Yet, there is no provision for clients and their families to choose state-operated public services.
  
• According to OMRDD, quality of these newly developed services will be a matter of "customer satisfaction." With over 600 private service providers across NYS, there is no plan for a developmentally disabled client or his family member to make an informed choice as to whether the private agency is dependable, safely operated, and dedicated to the client's interest.
  
• OMRDD acknowledges that "NY CARES" has built in yearly Cost of Living Adjustments for private agencies.
  
• OMRDD acknowledges that private agencies are already scrambling to make deals, and carve out pieces of the "NY CARES" plan for themselves.
  
• $26 million does not grow on trees. We must insure that no funds are shifted out of state-operated services ­ which already operate with reduced staffing and funding (down over 27% this year).
• Professional public employees in OMRDD are highly experienced in residential services, day programming, vocational and work-related training, and clinic services.
  
• Public services by public employees are characterized by professional care, continuity of care, and reliability of care and treatment.
  
• State-operated public services in OMRDD have always "been there" as a safety net to developmentally disabled people and their families; public services have "been there" to support and shore up private service providers when they are in trouble.

THIS YEAR . . .

• Give developmentally disabled people and their families a real choice!
• Reinvest public tax dollars into safe, dependable, publicly-provided services!
• Support professional, public, clinical services in OMRDD!
• Support the development of additional community-based, publicly operated housing and programming.
• Support an allocation of "NY CARES" funding for state-operated professional services!

- It's wise!

- It's good for developmentally disabled people and their families!

- It's good for New Yorkers!

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PAROLE
Enhance the Division of Parole's ability to provide quality protection for our communities.

Our communities need legislators who will:
- Get smart on crime and strengthen Parole rather than eliminate it for violent felons.
- Violent felons should not be released into our communities without parole supervision!

Here Are The Facts:

• Our communities will be safer with a program that eliminates good time reductions from sentences for violent felony offenders. Good time should be replaced with a mandatory merit time program that allows well-behaved inmates to reduce their maximum sentence by up to one-seventh if they successfully complete drug treatment, education, and vocational education programs. Numerous studies have shown that successful completion of these programs reduces recidivism. Parole release must be used to promote inmate program participation. We must stop rewarding inmates who do nothing in prison but avoid getting into serious trouble.
  
• Most parole officers carry unmanageable caseloads of between 75 and 100 felons. Parole officers need the resources to enforce the intensive supervision requirements of 4 contacts per month, mandatory drug testing, mandatory treatment, education and employment for all violent felony offenders released from prison.
  
• The extension of determinate sentencing to first time violent felony offenders will require the construction of additional prisons to handle a significant increase in the prison population.
  
• Determinate sentencing has failed in states that have changed their laws.
  
• The tragic murder of Polly Klaas occurred in California, a state that had abolished its parole board, instituted a determinate sentencing system, and enacted an automatic release program for dangerous offenders.
  
• Many states have recognized that eliminating parole is not the answer. Several states that abolished parole in the late 1970's and early 1980's, including Colorado, Connecticut and Florida, have reinstated parole. In fact, in Connecticut, after parole was abolished, the average time served for offenders fell to 13% of their sentence. Since that state reinstated parole, prisoners are serving 60% of their sentence.

The Legislature needs to adopt the following provisions to strengthen Parole:

• Require post-release intensive community supervision by parole officers for up to five years for all violent felony offenders and for life for all violent felony sex offenders. Caseloads for parole officers who supervise these offenders should not exceed twenty-five offenders.
  
• Abolish "good-time" reduction of maximum sentences for all violent felony offenders and replace it with "merit-time." Under this proposal an inmate could only reduce his or her maximum sentence by successfully completing a substance abuse rehabilitation program, a GED program, or a vocational education program, and have no severe disciplinary problems in the prison.
  
  Abolishing parole will not abolish criminals.
  New York needs more supervision of convicted criminals, not less.
  Provide the support Parole needs to reduce recidivism and provide real supervision of criminals in our communities.
  
  

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Pro-Parole Talking Points

In response to Governor Pataki's proposal to "end parole for all felons," PEF will be using the following points to oppose this legislation.

• Determinant sentencing (automatic release) will not stop the release of criminals. Automatic sentencing is weak on crime because sentences of incorrigible inmates will be automatically reduced without any consideration on inmates' participation in rehabilitation programs by Parole Boards.
  
• Automatic release removes the incentive for inmate rehabilitation and such released inmates are at greater risk of repeat criminal activity.
  
• Eliminating parole would not have prevented the death of Jenna Greishaber because her murderer was denied parole and was released after he had received automatic release.
  
• Eliminating parole does not prevent crime. One of the most tragic crimes of the decade ­ the murder of Polly Klaas ­ took place in California after parole was eliminated and automatic release was instituted.
  
• Many states have recognized that eliminating parole is not the answer. Several states that abolished parole, including Colorado, Connecticut and Florida, have reinstated it after finding that abolition did not increase actual time served. Prisons became so over crowded that some inmates had to be released early.

January 12, 1999

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SED
Keep the Quality in Elementary, Secondary and Higher Education.

Our communities need legislators who will ensure that our children's education is monitored by state employees who are accountable to the taxpayers and Legislature rather than by unaccountable, out-of-state private contractors.

Here Are The Facts:

• The Governor's budget again proposes the transfer of oversight of higher education from the Board of Regents and the State Education Department (SED) to the Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC), without funding. HESC is a money-processing agency, responsible for the administration of student financial aid. It has no experience or expertise in accrediting colleges or assuring academic quality.
  
• Last year's budget assigned to eighteen SED staff the responsibility for ensuring the continued success of legislatively-mandated educational opportunity programs, such as the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), which serve over 29,000 at-risk students. This year's budget proposes transferring that entire responsibility to HESC ­ but only nine staff persons are to be transferred from SED to HESC. In addition, the Governor proposes reducing HESC total staff by 67 positions while increasing their responsibilities.
  
• The Office of Higher Education saves taxpayer money by preventing the operation of fly-by-night operations which exist solely to cheat the state out of TAP and other student aid dollars and students out of a marketable education. In the past four years, over $19 million in TAP payments have been saved by this office. Other states are plagued by costly "diploma mills." If this proposal is enacted, New York will be next.
  
• It costs less than five cents for each $1,000 spent on higher education to fund the Office of Higher Education. This is a small price to pay for the accountability of our valuable educational resources.
  
• The Legislature wisely rejected the elimination of higher education staff at SED in the past and should reject it again this year!
  
• State lawmakers should also reject plans to privatize test development.
  
• 604 positions have been eliminated in SED since 1995, many of them in the Office of Assessment, which is responsible for developing statewide standardized tests. Because of a lack of staff, SED awarded two multi-million contracts to CTB-McGraw Hill, a California company, to develop the new competency tests for third and fourth-grade language arts and math.
  
• After receiving an estimated $5 million over the last three years, CTB-McGraw was late in delivering some of the materials, and made major errors in developing and distributing the Teachers Manual and the Test Coordinators Manual. SED is investigating these errors to determine whether they compromised the validity of the tests.
  
• State employees can develop these tests at a per-test cost of $250,000. CTB-McGraw-Hill will charge $833,333. Even if another $1.3 million in contingent expenses such as teacher training and site visits is added, having State employees develop these tests still results in a cost that is only 30 percent of the private contract.

We urge the Legislature to disapprove the proposed $3 million appropriation for this contract in this year's budget and instead use part of this money to fund a unit in the Office of Assessment to develop and administer these competency tests.

Other urgent priorities include stronger oversight of proprietary schools and keeping the state in control of its College Tuition Assistance Program.

• Proprietary schools in New York must be monitored to maintain the educational standards for all New Yorkers. The existence of unlicensed schools and the unscrupulous practices of some schools continue to be a major problem in New York State.
  
• The Bureau of Proprietary School Supervision, which is funded by industry fees, has been facing declining revenues. Its staff has been reduced from 40 to 14 positions. Further declines will result in the loss of protections to students, licensed schools, and the taxpayers who provide student financial aid.
  
• The Legislature must develop a long-term solution to the bureau's funding problem and appropriate $600,000 to restore 10 positions.
  
• The Executive Budget proposal for HESC calls for a $1.8 million increase in nonpersonal contract services in the Grants and Scholarships program.
  
• HESC has not filled vacant positions associated with the TAP program due to the hiring freeze.
  
• We understand that HESC intends to contract out for the operation of the TAP program. The Legislature should cut the money appropriated for the contract and use it to hire state staff so that control of the program remains with the state, not with a contractor.

Private contractors do not have the same dedication to our children as do state employees. The downsizing of the State Education Department must stop! Our children can't afford it, and neither can we.

Keep quality services at the State Education Department!

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