Editorial: Rendell Budget for Mentally Disabled

One measure of a state budget is how well it takes care of people who can't fully care for themselves. By that standard, Gov. Rendell's proposed budget falls short for citizens with mental disabilities.

The governor's spending plan for fiscal 2009 calls for no cost-of-living increase for community-based mental-health/mental-retardation services. This decision comes despite waiting lists of tens of thousands of people who need these services, and despite rising agency costs for necessities such as fuel for transportation.

About 700,000 people in Pennsylvania rely on these services, from autistic children to mentally retarded adults living at home with elderly parents. Overall state and federal funding for mental-health/mental-retardation programs totals about $5.4 billion. That includes a proposed $70 million increase to take about 900 families off of a waiting list, but there is no cost-of-living increase.

The demand far outpaces state spending. More than 4,000 families are on the emergency waiting list for mental-retardation services. And the budget calls for no more money to help people who are already enrolled in programs.

Harrisburg follows a traditional budget calculation when funding human-services agencies. In "good" years - when the economy is humming along and state coffers are full - policymakers approve a cost-of-living increase of 2 or 3 percent to aid our most vulnerable residents.

In "tight" budget years, these agencies get no cost-of-living increase. This is a tight year.

True, the economy is weak. But Pennsylvania does have a budget surplus of more than $550 million, plus a Rainy Day fund of $744 million. The new budget does not call for a tax increase.

And then there's that legislative slush fund that House and Senate leaders have been guarding. They have managed to hide away about $210 million of your tax dollars in recent years, to spend on such "necessities" as polling to see how well their political careers are faring.

Add it up, and the state is sitting on $1.5 billion in cash reserves that could be spent on vital government services. Yet there is no more money to help agencies that must keep up with inflation while treating the mentally disabled, people with mental illnesses or those in need of drug and alcohol treatment.

That situation needs to be corrected before the legislature completes the new state budget. Adding a 3 percent cost-of-living increase to the budget for MH/MR agencies, as the Republican-led Senate has approved, would cost an extra $53 million - about 3.5 percent of state cash reserves.

Defenders of the governor's budget point out that human-services agencies received a 3 percent increase in last year's budget, which is as good as it gets. But that ignores the increased demands that the state has placed on services for people with mental disabilities.

Mental-health/mental-retardation services receive all their funding from the state. Since the 1960s, there has been a continuous trend away from more costly institutional care toward community-based programs. Harrisburg needs to remember its commitment to our neediest citizens in the forthcoming budget.