Guest:  Todd Vaarwerk

Topic:  NYS budget issues for people with disabilities to watch

Duration:  5:53

Host:  Welcome to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of Western New York Independent Living (WNYIL). Our guest today is Todd Vaarwerk, Chief Policy Officer of WNYIL, and your host is yours truly Ernie Churchwell. Welcome to the program.

Guest:  Always good to be here.

Host:  As you are our man with his finger on the pulse of everything that happens in the public sector, I believe you have some information on issues in the New York State budget which is due April 1 that may affect individuals with disabilities. How can you enlighten us?

Guest:  As many of the regular listeners know, we talk about and send a group of consumers to Albany to advocate for issues important to us. With regard to the budget from the minute the budget comes out, but now we're about three quarters of the way through the budget process, and we're coming up on the state where stuff's going to be coming out fast and furious about how they're going to handle the issues in the budget. So, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the three things that you really need to be watching very carefully.

The first thing is that we've done a second Medicaid redesign team, the MRT 2 as actual part of this budget process, and their charge is to look at Medicaid expenditures and figure out a way to reduce the portion of the deficit that's Medicaid, responsible, or they think is Medicaid responsible. So, listeners who are Medicaid users and who gets services that matter to them, should be watching very closely what their providers are telling them about what the proposed cuts in the budget are. The big things that we're seeing are wanting again to cut more out of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program and we know how important that program is in the broader community. But you could be seeing some things about prescription co pays, you could be seeing some things about further limits to PT and OT and speech or concerns about the Medicaid plan changing around things based on transportation. Now, as part of the budget process, the one house budgets that is how much money the assembly in the Senate, say they want to spend in the budget hasn't been laid out yet. So a lot of these things that will tend to be priorities really won't come out in a strong way until after those budgets are released. But Medicaid expenses is one of the things that listeners should be looking very closely at in terms of advocating for the things that are important to them. In addition, one of the big things that we advocate a lot for is additional money for transportation especially public transportation. In the state budget, they handle that in upstate with something called STOA, which stands for State Transportation Operating Assistance. And every year you'll hear a statement that says it's too low, and every year local legislators will gather and talk about how we can raise that money, so that the NFTA doesn't need to go into disaster budgeting. Of course, people with disabilities are going to fully support public transit because it's really the only way we can afford to get around. So you'll be perhaps hearing things about changes to paratransit and talking about the costs related to the provision of paratransit services. Additional arguments are in housing, everybody in the community knows how difficult it is to come up with accessible and affordable housing. We're advocating in the state budget that more money be placed towards that goal, because we want people living in their own homes in the communities and rather than being in nursing homes. And this is a tough needle to thread, because, you know, housing is, is expensive to build and expensive to operate, and everybody knows around here that rents have been going up and up and up and up. And, you know, benefits don't, and the money that you get from the federal government, you know stays the same, except for once a year when you get your cost of living increase. Housing, transportation, medical issues, the big things coming around in the state budget.

Host:  I'm sure people will have questions, where can they reach you?

Guest:  They can always give my office a call 716-836-0822 extension 101, and watch our Facebook page at WNYIL because everything that you need to know, the minute we find out we tell you so go there and you'll get a really good lead. Also, our web page www.wnyl.org

Host:  Thanks for being with us Todd.

Guest:  Always a pleasure.

Host:  You've been listening to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of WNYIL. Our guest today was Todd Vaarwerk, Chief Policy Officer of WNYIL, and your host was yours truly, Ernie Churchwell.