Budget Update
The Legislature approved a $19 billion budget for FY11. The budget increases spending by 0.9 percent and borrows nearly $1 billion for operating expenses, while not raising any taxes. The $726 million FY11 budget deficit is mostly closed with $366 million from an extension of federal stimulus money, sweeping various funds such as the Energy Conservation Fund and Citizens Election Fund (post election), borrowing, and deferring a payment of $100 million into the state employees' pension fund. Approximately $177 million is cut from the budget, including cuts to human services.
Major highlights include:
- No cuts to AIDS Services or Syringe Exchange
- Increase in Housing/Homeless line for 50 NEW RAPs for chronically homeless
- No across-the-board funding cuts to private providers
- Reduces CT Home Care fees from 15% down to 6%
- Funds all domestic violence shelters for 24-hour staffing
- Does NOT include an Early Retirement Incentive for state employees
- Delays Contracting Standards Board until FY12
We will send an alert out early next week to generate Thank You calls to your legislators. This is MAJOR victory for us!! Thanks to all who have been relentless in making calls over the course of the session.
Thanks to the CT Association of Non-Profits for some of this information.
AIDS Awareness Day Follow-up
We wanted to follow up with you post- AIDS Awareness Day. By most accounts, it was a highly successful day. Over 300 people descended upon the Capitol on a beautiful day to rally and meet with their state Representatives and Senators.
We had a bang up selection of speakers which included two poets, Michael Hawkins and Fredrick Douglass Knowles; Kaye White from AIDS Project Hartford, Charlinda from CT Children's Medical Center, representing the voices of youths and their families, and the AIDS LIFE Campaign co-chairs, Shawn M. Lang and Leif Mitchell. read more
We had folks from Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Willimantic, Middletown, Waterbury, Meriden, New London, Manchester and Danbury (I hope we didn't leave anyone out!!). There were some glitches in terms of organizing in some areas, but we have some thoughts on how to shore up some of those. Overall, you all did an AMAZING job!! Thank you!!!!
Thanks to all who came up for the day and a special thanks to all of you who made appointments to meet with your legislators and for tracking them down throughout the day. It was an extremely busy day at the Capitol as legislators were in session, which on the one hand can make it easier to meet with them because they're there; but on the other hand it can make it more difficult because their occupied. We know that can be frustrating and cause folks to sometimes feel like their legislators don't care but we can tell you that your presence alone made a HUGE difference.
We got press from CT Now, channel 61 (thanks, Shelly Sindland), channel 30, the Waterbury Republican-American (thanks Jim Moore), The Day (thanks Ted Mann), and the Courant (thanks, Susan Campbell).
Click here to go to our FaceBook page for photos and videos from the day.
For those who didn't make it up for whatever reasons, or who didn't make the effort to meet with legislators we want to stress to you how incredibly important it is to do so. Shawn stayed there until 2:30 and over the course of the day heard from legislators whose constituents didn't contact them.They notice who IS there and who is NOT.
Post-rally, we were talking with a reporter and Senator Jonathan Harris stopped by to apologize for not making the rally. The reporter asked him if events like this were effective. He said, yes, they were and that the advocates (nodding to us) were also very effective. But, he said, what has the most impact is when people who are most affected by a particular issue meet with him. He said it can be easy to just read words on a page, or see numbers in a budget; but when you get to hear people's stories and struggles, it informs his (and other legislators) perspectives.
Shawn witnessed a particularly touching moment with the large crew from hard hittin' New Britain who met with Appropriation's Committee Co-chair, John Geragosian. He came out of the session and spent quite a bit of time with him. Shawn spoke with him afterwards, thanking him for his time. The folks at Someplace Special had all signed a card. He told Shawn that he keeps all of those cards and that he has them all in one place. A little goes a long way.
The session's last day is Wednesday, May 5th. They are nowhere near agreement on a budget. So, we'll be sending out an alert sometime next week urging you to contact your legislators again. For those of you who met with them, we'll be asking you to thank them for their time. And, we'll be asking ALL of you to urge them to prevent further cuts to the AIDS services (prevention), syringe exchange and AIDS housing funding line items.
Stay tuned for the alert next week. And once again, thanks for all you do.
National AIDS Strategy Report
The White House has just released the historic National AIDS Strategy Report. As a member of the National AIDS Housing Coalition, Shawn M. Lang, CARC's Director of Public Policy, participated in fashioning the housing aspects of this report.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ONAP_rpt.pdf
Please take a minute to look at this report. This is the first time that we've had a national AIDS strategy since President Clinton's administration.
Key Improvements in the Health Care Reform Bill
Click here for a snapshot of some of the key improvements in the Health Care Reform Bill that will impact people with HIV/AIDS.
Members of the HIV Health Care Access Working Group and others are currently working to produce a series of documents that will provide the following:
- more detailed overviews of provisions in the bill that improve care, treatment, prevention and wellness for people living with HIV;
- a detailed timeline for when the provisions go into effect;
- a summary of key implementation issues that demand our attention; and
- next steps for addressing what wasn't successfully addressed in the health care reform bill.
As those documents come out, we will post them here.
HRSA Housing Policy Recinded
HRSA Temporarily Rescinds Housing Policy Pending Comprehensive Review
Thanks to the aggressive advocacy by AIDS housing consumers and supporters across the country and outreach from members of Congress since 2007, the HRSA Administrator issued a notice published in today's Federal Register IMMEDIATELY RESCINDING Amendment 1 to Policy Notice 99-02 imposing a 24 month lifetime cap on the use of Ryan White funding for housing. read more
Specifically, "grantees will not be required to enforce the amendment for beneficiaries that might be at or near the 24-month cumulative cap on short-term and emergency housing assistance. At the same time, grantees will benefit from general policy guidance with regard to the use of Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program funds for housing referral services and short-term or emergency housing needs. A comprehensive review of the Housing Policy will permit HRSA's Administrator time to evaluate completely all aspects of it. The Policy Notice is amended to address updated nomenclature, and is reprinted below for ease of reference."
To view the notice, click here.
Analysis on the Governor's 2010-2011 Budget
(click here for a PDF version of this analysis)
The Governor's budget proposes to cut Syringe Exchange and AIDS prevention services by 30% in the Department of Public Health's budget. The cuts to AIDS Services places us at the 1997 funding level; and the cuts to SEP fall below funding levels prior to 1995. During that same time period, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the state has doubled. We have publicly stated that we were willing to share the burden of the state's budget crisis, but not to do so disproportionately. A 30% cut is far too deep for us to be able to sustain the tremendous HIV prevention work offered across the state. read more
An analysis of those cuts is below. There are other cuts, particularly in the area of health care (e.g. Medicaid, SAGA) and changes to programs that cover the cost of mental health and other medications that will also impact people living with HIV/AIDS. We will send out the details of those cuts once their impact is analyzed.
| |
Appropriated
SFY 2009-2010 |
Proposed
SFY 2010-2011 |
+/- |
% |
| Department of Public Health: |
| AIDS Services |
$4,952,598 |
$3,466,819 |
($1,485,779) |
30% |
| Syringe Exchange |
$455,072 |
$318,550 |
($136,522) |
30% |
| Department of Social Services: |
| CADAP |
$606,678 |
$606,678 |
- |
- |
| Housing/Homeless |
$47,306,657 |
$44,894,782 |
($2,411,875) |
5% |
(This includes AIDS housing. We believe that this cut operationalizes the cuts made last year.)
Delay implementation of the HIV/AIDS Waiver
This home and community-based services waiver that would provide services beyond what Medicaid offers (e.g. case management, homemaker, personal care assistance, adult day health and respite) for up to 100 PLWHA.
Action Steps:
- Attend the public hearings on the budget! DSS is tentatively scheduled for the evening of February 11th and DPH for the evening of February 18th. We will need good turnout of PLWHA and providers. All should wear their AIDS Awareness T-shirts so that we stand together as a unified effort.
- Reply to AIDS LIFE Campaign e-mail request for information on the impact of the proposed cuts! Under a separate email, Shawn will be requesting information from you as to what impact these cuts will have on your programs (e.g. staff and services lost, number of clients who will no longer be able to access those services, etc.) - Please take the time to respond to that request. We will need to quantify what these cuts will mean in very concrete terms.
- Contact your legislators to let them know how these cuts will impact you. For example, if you have an SEP, what would a 30% cut look like in your agency? Click here to find your legislator.
This is only the beginning of the budget process. We will need to respond quickly and strongly as things happen, and will need maximum participation from all of you, your boards, consumers and colleagues. As always, thanks for all you do. Contact Shawn at 860.761.6699 or Leif at 203.258.3718 should you have questions.
Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009
We are pleased to announce that the President has not only signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 (click here to read his remarks) but has announced that the travel ban is lifted and that all HIV+ people will be able to freely travel into the U.S. early in 2010. read more
Thanks to everyone's amazing work and advocacy on these issues!!
Please take a moment to call CT's congressional delegation to thank them for their support. (numbers below) We want to especially thank Senator Dodd for his steadfast leadership on getting the Ryan White Act reauthorized.
The Senator's staffer, Tamar Magarik-Haro who was a great advocate and support through all of this wanted me to pass along this message to you:
"I just wanted to tell you that I was incredibly fortunate and was invited to the White House for the Ryan White bill signing. The ceremony is in about an hour. I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you and all the clients and fellow advocates you work with. I will be thinking about them when this bill gets signed and how much meeting them over the years and hearing their stories have meant to me. Thank you for supporting me and my boss throughout all of this. Please let folks you work with know that I'm thinking about them and hope that this bill does a lot of good for them."
- Senator Chris Dodd: 202-224-2823
- Senator Joe Lieberman: 202-224-4041
- Congressman Jim Himes: 202-225-5541
- Congressman John Larson: 202-225-2265
- Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro: 202-225-3661
- Congressman Chris Murphy: 202-225-4476
- Congressman Joe Courtney: 202-225-2076
About the AIDS LIFE Campaign (ALC)
The AIDS LIFE (Legislative Initiative and Funding Effort) Campaign - a program of the CT AIDS Resource Coalition - is Connecticut's only statewide group that focuses solely on all of the policy-related issues impacting people living with and at high risk for HIV/AIDS - from prevention and education, including needle exchange; to supportive services; to health care, such as Medicaid and CADAP; to housing.
In addition to our advocacy work at the legislature, members of the AIDS LIFE Campaign convene meetings with key state departments such as the Department of Public Health and the Department of Social Services to work with them on a whole host of issues ranging from contracts and timely payments, CADAP, Medicaid changes (e.g. prescription and provider visit co-pays), as well as federal issues such as the HOPWA (Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS) housing program, Ryan White funds, and other pertinent topics that arise.
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