LINCOLN — Advocates for the developmentally disabled filled the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday to rally for adequate funding for service providers.

One speaker, Sarah Graham of Duet Nebraska, said that her agency has been forced to close eight to nine group homes and shutter a long-running day service center because of inadequate state reimbursement for services.

Despite a funding increase two years ago, Graham said she’s only able to pay her front-line workers $16 an hour, when today’s “living wage” for a single person is more than $20 an hour.

‘Good enough for you’ life

“What we’re being told is that you should settle for the ‘good enough for you’ life and not the good life,” she said, calling it a “funding crisis.”

The rally came as floor debate began in the Nebraska Legislature on the state budget.

The budget calls for a $27.5 million increase in funding for services for the developmentally disabled, of which $10 million comes from state funds and the rest from federal funds.

Advocates, during the noisy rally, called for an increase in that funding to $52 million, with $25 million in state funds attracting $27 million in matching federal funds.

Waiting list exceeds 2,700

Edison McDonald of The Arc of Nebraska said such a funding increase would address the state’s waiting list for DD services that is now more than 2,700 people.

Adequate funding, he said, would allow developmentally disabled residents to remain in the community; without it, it could force some into a nursing home or into homelessness.

“Imagine waking up every day and not knowing if you’ll get the support you need or not,” said Heather Snyder,  a developmentally disabled woman from Lincoln who has been able to live in an apartment because of supported state services.

“We have the power to make a difference,” she said.

Doubling of DD funding sought

State Sens. Ben Hansen of Blair, Tony Vargas of Omaha, Myron Dorn of Adams and Danielle Conrad of Lincoln attended the rally, which filled the cavernous Rotunda with people holding signs and frequently applauding statements by speakers.

Advocates are backing a bill introduced by Lincoln Sen. George Dungan that would provide $52 million in funding for DD services, about double what is in the proposed budget currently.

But Dungan’s proposal, Legislative Bill 1117, has not advanced from the Legislature’s budget-writing Appropriations Committee. Advocates said Tuesday they plan to amend the budget bill during second-round debate.

First-round debate began Tuesday on adjustments proposed in the two-year state budget approved last year.  But lawmakers adjourned for the day before getting to a vote on one of the budget bills, LB 1412.

Wrong to cut mental health funds

During floor debate, more than one senator said that he or she would have preferred to allocate more money for provider rates for DD and other social services but that there weren’t the votes for it in the nine-member Appropriations Committee.

Others said it was wrong to cut $15 million in funding for behavioral health services when so many Nebraskans who suffer from depression or other mental illnesses cannot get treatment. Those funds are being diverted to hire more nurses at the Lincoln Regional Center, which has a severe staffing shortage.

“If we’re in such good financial shape, why aren’t we considering spending it on the greater good, beyond property taxes?” asked Bellevue Sen. Carole Blood.

Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad criticized the budget proposal, saying it was wrong to “sweep” $245 million in cash reserve funds from various state agencies to provide preliminary funding of Gov. Jim Pillen’s plan to reduce local property taxes by 40%.

Such sweeps, Conrad said, usually happen only during a budget crisis, when the state needs to dip into every “cookie jar” to finance state government. Pulling reserve funds now was “divorced” from the state’s healthy cash reserve, she said.

Conrad called Pillen’s plan to raise taxes and cut services in hopes of reducing local property taxes by “an arbitrary” 40% “bad politics and bad policy.”

But Elkhorn Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, who is leading the crafting of the governor’s plan, called on senators to be patient.

She said criticism of the property tax relief plan should wait until the Revenue Committee, which she chairs, advances a bill.

Linehan said that it “irritates” her when senators and others maintain that a $2 billion cut in local property taxes — the amount 40% represents — is “unsustainable,” given that the overall state cash reserve fund will be nearly $1 billion at the end of his fiscal year.

The OpenSky Policy Institute, which often opposes state tax cuts, said Tuesday in an email that the state faces a “structural deficit” in the budget in coming years because of the state income tax cuts enacted last year, which will eventually grow to $1 billion less in revenue by the 2027-28 fiscal year.

The sweep of reserve funds, the organization argues, will make it harder for the state to finance services.

Property taxes ‘not sustainable’

But Linehan pointed out that right now, Nebraskans are paying  $2,234 per person a year in property taxes, which compares with $1,628 in state income taxes and $1,215 in state sales taxes.

“It’s too much, guys,” Linehan told fellow senators about property taxes. “That’s what’s not sustainable.”

Debate on the budget bills is scheduled to resume Wednesday.

This story was originally published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. It is part of the national nonprofit States Newsroom. Find more at nebraskaexaminer.com.