Tag Archive | "budget"

IL seeks to add 100K people to Medicaid program

February 02, 2012

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By Andrew Thomason | Illinois Statehouse News
 
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois could add 100,000 new enrollees to its Medicaid rolls in the near future.

Read the full story

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PA Dems, union back $30M in grants for failing schools

February 01, 2012

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Funded with natural gas drilling tax or Corrections savings
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — In discussions of how to best spend taxpayer dollars, it is an argument frequently repeated: It costs less to educate a child today than to imprison him or her tomorrow.

And the facts and numbers back up that statement.

Studies have equated fewer years of childhood education with an increased likelihood of adult imprisonment. Each public school student in Pennsylvania costs taxpayers about $13,000 annually, while each inmate in the state’s growing prison system costs about $35,000 annually.
But state Rep. Eugene DePasquale, D-York, turned that policy question on its side Wednesday morning, when he proposed a new program that would spend $30 million on the state’s 18 most financially struggling school districts.  It would be funded with potential cost-savings in the state Department of Corrections.
“We need to look at some savings in the Department of Corrections,” DePasquale said.
DePasquale and state Sen. Judy Schwank, D-Berks, are introducing legislation this week that would create the Priority Assistance Grant for Education, or PAGE, program to give additional funding to help keep some supplementary educational programs in place or restore programs that were cut back or eliminated by state budget cuts.

Proposed Supplemental Funding

District County $$$
Clairton City Allegheny $219,197
McKeesport Area Allegheny $637,092
Sto-Rox Allegheny $405,557
Woodland Hills Allegheny $317,461
Aliquippa Beaver $297,448
Reading Berks $7,470,286
Greater Johnstown Cambria $557,554
Harrisburg City Dauphin $2,757,378
Steelton-Highspire Dauphin $267,891
Chester-Uplands Delaware $3,895,556
Erie City Erie $2,053,455
Albert Gallatin Fayette $582,139
Lancaster City Lancaster $1,727,896
Lebanon Lebanon $1,016,960
Allentown City Lehigh $4,157,928
Farrell Area Mercer $323, 271
Norristown Area Montgomery $205,499
York City York $3,107,433

TOTAL $30,000,000
DePasquale said his first choice for funding the program would be a severance tax on natural gas drillers operating in the state.
But since such a tax does not exist — and Gov. Tom Corbett has pledged not to allow it to come into being — DePasquale said the state should look to save money by changing the way nonviolent offenders are incarcerated.
“They need to be in treatment, which would be significantly less,” DePasquale said. “What are you getting for having a nonviolent offender, who needs rehab and treatment, and paying $35,000 for them to be incarcerated?”
According to the state Department of Corrections, each inmate costs taxpayers $35,000 annually, though they do not differentiate between violent and nonviolent offenders.
Nonviolent offenders make up nearly 40 percent of Pennsylvania’s inmate population, up from 20 percent in 1980.
Nonviolent offenders include those who are incarcerated for drug possession and driving under the influence.
Since then, more than 2,800 offenders have been referred to the program, out of 9,600 who were eligible. To enter the program, the prosecutor and sentencing judge must agree to allow the offender to participate.
Susan Bensinger, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the SIP program saves approximately $34,000 per offender who participates. Since 2005, it has saved the state more than $31 million.
Even so, the Department of Corrections has been the fastest growing segment of the state budget, with increases for the past six consecutive years. In this year’s state budget, the Department of Corrections accounted for 7.4 percent of the general fund, nearly $1.9 billion.
Additional savings would need to be found through additional sentencing reforms, if DePasquale’s plan became law, but there are other roadblocks.
For starters, $30 million will hardly fix the financial problems in those 18 school districts.
The much-publicized budget shortfall at Chester-Uplands School District in Delaware County, for example, totals $38 million, but the district would qualify for less than $4 million under the proposed program.
Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Republican Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said House Republicans were waiting to hear Corbett‘s plan to address the struggling school districts in his upcoming budget address.
“No one is going to let any district fail, but unfortunately some of these districts have failed the kids year after year,” Miskin said. “More money is not necessarily the answer. We’ve had years of overspending, and this is where it got us.”
The state Department of Education did not return PA Independent’s calls for comment.
Education spending in Pennsylvania has doubled in the past 15 years, while statewide enrollment has declined slightly.
The proposed $30 million program would help fund school districts that face financial distress and would allow them to use that money to:
  • Fund programs like early childhood education and full-day kindergarten;
  • Reduce class size;
  • Restore programs that were scaled back as a result of budget cuts.
Michael Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, or PSEA, the state’s largest teachers’ union, said the PAGE plan would give schools necessary resources to meet their educational goals.
“It will invest in our struggling schools, not cut them. It will promote solutions that work, not eliminate them,” he said.
In practice, the proposal would be similar to the Accountability Block Grant program, which was reduced from $359 million to $100 million in last year’s budget. At the time, Republicans said the intention was to do away with the block grants entirely in the coming state budget and consolidate all state funding into the basic education subsidy to school districts.

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Civic report: IL faces struggle to control exploding Medicaid costs

January 30, 2012

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By Benjamin Yount | Illinois Statehouse News

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois’ difficulties reining in its pension costs are expected to pale in comparison to its efforts to control Medicaid, the state’s other big expense.

A new report released Monday from the Civic Federation, a Chicago-based nonpartisan policy group that focuses on state spending, predicts Illinois’ Medicaid costs will skyrocket over the next five years.

Laurence Msall, federation president, said lawmakers and governors have spent Illinois into a deep hole by expanding Medicaid, which provides health-care coverage to low-income families.
“What is most frightening is that even after the income tax, the state was not able to pass a budget to fully fund Medicaid,” Msall said, referring to a 67 percent personal income tax increase and a 48 percent corporate income tax increase in January 2011.
But even with that additional revenue, Illinois lawmakers still had to pay more than $1 billion in 2011 Medicaid bills.
The Civic Federation report paints a grim picture for Medicaid spending:
  • Illinois is on pace to spend a total of nearly $14 billion on Medicaid this year
  • Illinois’ Medicaid costs are expected to increase 41 percent over the next five years.
  • Gov. Pat Quinn is budgeting only a 13 percent spending increase.
Illinois will see as many as 296,000 new people enroll in Medicaid once the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014.
Under the new law, which is designed to make health care and insurance more accessible, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of new Medicaid patients for two years. After 2016, Illinois will have to pay 50 percent of the costs.
The Civic Federation report also details increases in pension spending from $5.7 billion this year to $7.8 billion in 2017, and unpaid bills from $8.6 billion this year to $34.5 billion in five years.
Msall added that Medicaid spending is the biggest single cost for state government. The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services expects to spend a total of $14 billion on Medicaid this year, that includes both state and federal dollars.
The Civic Federation report calculates pension spending to rise 35 percent over five years, while Medicaid spending is expected to jump 41 percent.
But it may be more difficult to cut Medicaid spending.
Illinois lawmakers refused a request from Quinn last year to lower the amount paid to doctors, hospitals and pharmacists who serve Medicaid patients. Instead, lawmakers delayed payments by hundreds of days and will pay some Medicaid bills next year.
State Rep. Patti Bellock, R-Hinsdale, said, “The hospitals and Medicaid providers asked for a delay rather than a rate cut.”
But Bellock said Illinois cannot trim the size of the Medicaid program.
“So the (federal government) is preventing us from moving forward with the some of the things we need here,” Bellock said. “Some of the major parts of the reform bill we did last year, the income verification and the citizen verification, are being prevented by” Washington, D.C.
Bellock was a key player in Medicaid reform legislation that focused on income and residency verification that Quinn signed into law last year. But those reforms have been stalled, because provisions in the federal health-care law prohibit states from changing Medicaid eligibility.
However, Republican Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said Illinois is not completely stifled by the federal government.
Msall said Illinois can save money on Medicaid by closing state-run institutions and moving people to community care programs. Quinn has proposed closing at least two institutions, one in downstate Jacksonville and the other in Cook County.
Topinka said lawmakers are going to have to make a lot more difficult decisions on Medicaid, but she said Illinois has run out of time to “kick the can down the road.”

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Chester Upland financial crisis affects local PA charter school

January 24, 2012

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Parents, students from Chester charter school implore officials to solve funding crisis
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — The financial troubles at Chester Upland School District could disrupt classes at one of the state’s largest charter schools, which also operates in the district’s city of Chester.

Parents and students from Chester Community Charter School descended Tuesday on the state Capitol to call for Gov. Tom Corbett and legislative leaders to solve the financial programs in the school district and the charter school.

The group delivered more than 1,300 petitions to the governor and rallied on the steps of the statehouse, holding signs that implored lawmakers to provide emergency funds to the school district and charter school.
Without some additional funding, those who made the trek to the Capitol were clear about the bleak future many children in one of the state’s poorest communities would face.
“If you close our schools down, you’re going to have more of these kids ending up in jail and in prison,” said Harry Jackson, a father of two students in the Chester Community Charter School. “If they can’t fund us now, what are they going to do when they are in prison?”
In the city of Chester, the average household income is only $24,900 and more than one-third of the population lives below the federal poverty line.
David Clark, CEO of the Chester Community Charter School, said the school has created “an oasis in the middle of Chester.”
The Chester Community Charter School educates 60 percent of the students in the city of Chester from grades K-8, in nine school buildings spread across two campuses within the city, said Clark.
“Our parents have chosen to trust us to provide a quality education for their children,” Clark said.
Parents at the rally agreed.
“I feel like the charter schools are a tremendous opportunity for our kids,” said Sakina Young, a resident of Chester and mother of a fourth-grader and first-grader at the Chester Community Charter School. “Our children have dreams too, and they won’t be able to pursue those dreams without education.”
But the district’s financial troubles have put those dreams at risk.
The school district, which is a conduit for funding to charter schools from the state Department of Education, owes the charter school more than $7 million, which was directly affecting their ability to pay teachers, administrators and vendors, Clark said.
Corbett and local lawmakers met in private Monday to discuss how to address the financial situation in the district.
Stacy Brown of the PA Independent contributed to this report

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Week in Review: Shale is at the top of the PA pile

January 20, 2012

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School districts in crisis; low growth expected in 2012
By PA Independent Staff
HARRISBURG — Lawmakers returned here this week for the first time in 2012 and want to make the passage of a Marcellus shale impact fee and regulation bill the No. 1 issue before Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget address in February.

Other areas of state government also are looking ahead to the budget battle, looming this spring.

Financial projections from the state’s new Independent Fiscal Office confirmed the Corbett administration’s concerns that Pennsylvania might have to make further cuts to keep spending in line with revenue, though some economic growth is expected.
And school districts, particularly the poorest ones that rely the most on state tax dollars to function, could be heading toward crisis as budgets continue to grow even as students leave.
Local concerns over state drilling bill
A proposal allowing the state Attorney General’s Office to bring lawsuits against municipalities that attempt to ban natural gas drilling drew protesters, as lawmakers continue to negotiate on a Marcellus shale policy package.
This issue is one of several a joint House and Senate Conference Committee must sort through this month, after the state House and Senate could not work out differences on separate bills to create a natural gas drilling impact fee and updated safety, environmental and zoning regulations.
The six-member committee — two legislators each from the House and Senate majorities as well as one from each body’s minority — has not been formed yet. Negotiations continue behind-closed-doors between House and Senate leaders.
The Marcellus shale drilling legislation “is bad legislation,” said Maria Payan, a York County resident who attended a rally Tuesday on the steps of the Capitol rotunda. “This bill would prevent citizens from passing laws to protect their own health and safety.”
“The Attorney General is the appropriate office to handle these issues, because that office is supposed to be above reproach, and there is nothing wrong with the attorney general calling balls and strikes,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, a member of the conference committee and sponsor of the Senate bill.
Scarnati, one of the architects of the natural gas bills being debated in the General Assembly, wants to have the final package passed before the new budget process begins in February.
School district faces financial crisis due to mismanagement
State Department of Education Secretary Ron Tomalis and Gov. Tom Corbett said they believe the Chester Upland School Board has mismanaged the district and are determined to stop pouring more state dollars into the Delaware County district.
The Chester Upland district and its solicitor, Robin Bush, are not talking publicly about the matter.
Since 2003, the school district has received nearly $31 million in financial assistance above what the state was required to provide. Between June 2010 and March 2011, the district received $9.5 million in special funding over what was provided for in traditional state funding, according to the Department of Education.
In an exclusive interview with the PA Independent this week, Tomalis said his department advanced $16.35 million in basic education funding last year, so the district could satisfy its financial obligations, avoid default on loan payments and continue operating.
“The department’s unprecedented financial support and technical assistance were extraordinary measures to assist the district in its ability to ensure continued operations,” Tomalis said. “However, they were not a permanent solution for financial recovery.”
Democratic lawmakers are putting pressure on the administration to make more emergency funds available to the district, which Tomalis said will be given enough aid to make it to the end of this school year.
Redistricting cases face conflict of interest in court
A potential conflict of interest on the state Supreme Court could throw a monkey wrench into the final step of Pennsylvania’s legislative redistricting process and leave voters without knowing their districts when the election process begins next week.
A petition, filed with the state Supreme Court by a Berks County resident, seeks to disqualify Justice Joan Orie Melvin from Monday’s hearing on the new state House and Senate district maps. The complaint alleges a conflict of interest, because Orie Melvin’s decision would determine the new legislative district for her sister, state Sen. Jane Orie, R-Allegheny.
The complaint, filed by Dennis Baylor of Hamburg, refers to the Pennsylvania Code of Judicial Conduct, which tells judges to “perform the duties of their office impartially and diligently.”
The code also requires that judges “should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary” and “refrain from political activity inappropriate to their judicial office.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the challenges Monday in the state Capitol, the day before the first step in the state’s primary election process begins with the circulation of nominating petitions.
Legal experts said judges at all levels typically recuse themselves from cases involving family members. This principle should extend to a judge deciding a legislative district for a family member, but a formal process for determining a conflict of interest in this situation does not exist.
Orie Melvin is also the target of a grand jury investigation and her sister is awaiting trial on charges that she used her state Senate office and resources to help get Orie Melvin elected to the state’s highest court in 2008.
New Fiscal Office makes first projections
Pennsylvania should see moderate economic growth as unemployment figures remain mostly the same this year, according to projections by the state’s new Independent Fiscal Office.
The new office is intended to provide an assessment of economic, demographic, revenue and expenditure trends, which they said will affect Pennsylvania’s fiscal condition over the next five years.
Independent Fiscal Office Director Matthew Knittel, a former senior economist with the U.S. Department of Treasury,said the Great Recession is expected to continue to restrain economic growth, and state unemployment figures are expected to hold at its current 7.9 percent throughout the year.
Fiscal Office projections, which used the current fiscal year as a base as well as revenue from taxes and other sources, showed that real economic growth would remain modest at 1.6 percent for the commonwealth for 2012. Real growth should peak in the state in 2014 at 3.2 percent, while unemployment should dip to 7.1 percent in 2014, according to projections.
The projections come one month after state Budget Secretary Charles Zogby said Pennsylvania was facing economic problems that have led to a $500 million shortfall by the end of the fiscal year in six months.
Voucher battle is 15 years in the making
School choice is advancing in Pennsylvania, even as a public school voucher plan remains stuck in legislative limbo.
Lawmakers and lobbyists are geared up for another fight over the creation of a public school voucher program aimed at providing educational options for the children of low-income families who are enrolled in failing public schools. The state Senate passed a voucher bill in November, but attempts to get it through the state House in December failed.
But while vouchers get most of the ink — as they have since they were first proposed by Gov. Tom Ridge in 1996 — the educational options available to Pennsylvania families today have expanded dramatically in 20 years.
Pennsylvania boasts a robust charter school system that includes cyber charter schools; the Education Improvement Tax Credit, or EITC, which provides an average scholarship of $1,000 to low-income families who want their children to attend private schools; and rules that allow parents to teach their students at home.
The key is to improve education options, said Ken Kilpatrick, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, which represents charter schools in the state.
“It’s families making a choice about what school will give (their) child the best educational future,” Kilpatrick said. “Competition is forcing districts to think about how they can improve.”

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