Legislative Bulletin: New Budget Advocacy Alerts!
Advocacy Day Recap
Thank you to everyone who took part in the LeadingAge NY/Adult Day Health Care Council/Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State Advocacy Day on Tues., Feb. 7th! More than 80 attendees met with over 70 legislators, including key committee chairs and leadership, and top staff. Members advocated on issues such as staffing ratios, MLTC rate adequacy, affordable senior housing and services, and increasing the SSI rate for ACFs. We greatly appreciate your efforts!
All the materials utilized during Advocacy Day, including service line-specific issue briefs, are available on our 2017-18 State Budget Advocacy page. If you were not able to join us in Albany, you can still use these briefs to educate your lawmakers at home. Please call your legislators today and set up meetings in their district offices to go over your budget concerns. Lawmakers are typically in their districts on Thursdays and Fridays this time of year and will be on recess from Feb. 20th to 27th. Take advantage of these opportunities, and tell your story! Explain to your legislators how certain budget proposals will impact your organization and why they should support our policy agenda. Our Advocacy Action Plan and Advocacy Action Plan – Issue Breakdown resources can assist you.
New Budget Advocacy Letters – Contact Your Lawmakers Today!
This week, Senate Majority Leader John J. Flanagan, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Senate Finance Committee Chair Catharine Young, and Assembly Ways and Means Committee Chair Herman D. Farrell, Jr. announced an agreement on a joint legislative budget schedule that sets deadlines for the adoption of this year’s budget. Revenue consensus is expected on or before March 1st, and one-house budget bills will be passed by March 13th. Make sure your legislators know your priorities as they develop their one-house budget priorities.
During these critical weeks of budget negotiations, we urge members to take action on the following budget priorities:
- Ensure MLTC Rate Adequacy
- Support an SSI Increase and the Restoration of the Enriched Housing Subsidy for ACFs (Asm. Anthony Brindisi is circulating a letter in support of an SSI increase. Please contact your lawmakers and ask them to sign on.)
- Ensure High Quality Nursing Home Care for New Yorkers
- Support Capital and Services Funding for Senior Housing
- Protect Home and Community-based Services (HCBS) in New York State
- Support Capital Funding for the LTPAC Sector
Once you’ve sent a letter to your lawmakers, we strongly encourage you to spread the message on Facebook and Twitter. Over the past year, we’ve had thousands of letters sent, but very few social media messages. These platforms are powerful tools that you can use to quickly and easily share your message and encourage others to take action as well.
In addition, LeadingAge NY has signed onto a letter urging lawmakers to reject the Governor’s proposal to consolidate several key health initiatives in a pooled appropriation, and then reduce this pooled funding by 20%. Under this proposal, important health programs benefiting millions of New Yorkers are at risk of being cut. The proposed consolidation and cuts include programs that allow people to remain in the community rather than in a nursing home, including the Nursing Home Transition and Diversion (NHTD) waiver and Enriched Housing subsidies. If you are impacted by this proposal, please call your legislators, share the letter with them, and urge them to reject it.
TBI Integration Bill Advances in Senate
S.517 (Young), a bill allowing the integration of individuals with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) sustained after the age of 21 into programs within the developmental disabilities service sector, advanced from the Senate Health to the Senate Finance Committee. LeadingAge NY continues to support this key legislation. S.517 would ensure that individuals with a TBI living in urban, underserved, or rural areas, where caregiver shortages and a lack of TBI community resources often lead to placement into nursing homes, receive the support and services they need. Our memo of support is available here, and you can add your voice here.
Check Out LeadingAge NY’s Young at Heart Campaign!
LeadingAge NY recently launched a public relations campaign, “Young at Heart,” to promote the good work of not-for-profit aging services providers and get people thinking differently about aging services.
As you will see from the Young at Heart website, we have designed the platform to provide education to consumers about all the aging services available, resources available to pay for services, the innovative care and services being offered by not-for-profit providers, and a provider locator to link consumers to our member providers in their area.
We have also created a Young at Heart Facebook page to begin a public conversation about aging and to direct people to our website. The Facebook page is intended to feature the great work of our members, as you will see from some of the articles already posted. If you have good work to feature, be sure to share it with us!
Please help us generate traffic to our website and “likes” on our Facebook page by sharing this campaign on your organization's website and Facebook page. Be sure to “like” our Facebook page as well. And, if you have your own personal Facebook page, please do the same.
Housing Budget Hearing Postponed Until Feb. 17th
Lastly, an important scheduling change: the Joint Legislative Budget Hearing on Housing has been postponed until next Fri., Feb. 17th. LeadingAge NY will be providing testimony at this hearing as well as at the Health/Medicaid hearing on Thurs., Feb. 16th.
Contacts:
Ami Schnauber, aschnauber@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8854
Jeff Diamond, jdiamond@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8821