Advocacy Alert! Budget Letters Available Online

Lawmakers will return to Albany tomorrow., Feb. 25 following a week-long recess. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Heastie announced a “joint legislative budget schedule" in order for the State to pass an on-time, Wed., April 1, budget. We urge members, during these critical weeks of budget negotiations, to take part in a number of advocacy campaigns, and take action on the following budget priorities:

• Support the needs of managed long term care plans
• Earmark capital funding for aging services providers
• Reject cuts to EQUAL funding for adult care facilities
• Support an increase to the Congregate Care Level 3 Supplemental Security Income

Additional letters relating to other budget priorities will be developed and posted on our Advocacy site in the coming days. If a letter does not pertain to your service line, we ask that you please contact your lawmakers anyway - the more lawmakers hear about an issue, the likelier it will be addressed.

You may notice that letters look differently than they have in the past; this is because we are now using a new advocacy tool, Phone-2-Action. With this new tool, advocates can now Tweet and Facebook legislators. Be sure to check it out and tell us what you think!

And as always, if you have any concerns or questions about these or other advocacy initiatives, please do not hesitate to contact your government relations team.

Contact: Alyssa Lovelace, alovelace@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8844