Late Vt. budget trims would affect nursing home residents, state parks, other areas

Critics blast package of late Vt. budget trims

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Advocates for the elderly worry about changes in Medicaid funding for nursing homes, environmentalists say state park land would be sold too easily and regional planners say they can’t be rushed into a merger with economic development offices.

Those are among the complaints being voiced about a package of efforts to trim the state budget dubbed “Challenges for Change.”

The aim of the package was to cut $38 million of the $154 million budget deficit that lawmakers faced at the beginning of the year. The method was to have a new legislative committee work closely with Douglas administration officials to find savings by retooling state programs to make them more efficient.

Even as they were unveiled Tuesday, it was clear the changes would fall short — at least initially — of the $38 million goal. But as the week wore on, lobbyists for environmental groups, the elderly and other interests that get state funding found new things to criticize.

One complaint was about the process. The House filled most of the $154 million budget gap when it passed a pared-down budget March 27. But the budget counted on the $38 million in Challenges for Change savings while the details of that package weren’t to be revealed until five days later.

Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, said legislators are supposed to deliberate on a budget before passing it.

“Never in my time here have I seen remotely close to the level of usurpation of the legislative process through joint actions of the administration and legislative leadership,” she said in a speech on the House floor. “It is an evisceration of a representative democracy.”

An aide to House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, said Friday that the speaker would not be available for comment.

Neale Lunderville, the secretary of administration and Gov. Jim Douglas’ point man on the budget, said a dire situation called for an unusual process.

“We’re facing a $154 million budget gap this year and another $100 million next year. Studying this thing and making no decision leaves a $250 million budget gap. That is not acceptable,” Lunderville said.

Environmentalists and advocates for mental patients charged that the Republican administration was using the Challenges package to slip through changes it had failed to get through a Democrat-controlled Legislature in the past.

Chris Kilian, director of the Vermont office of the Conservation Law Foundation, took aim at a provision in a Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation document provided to lawmakers that called for “exemption from the APA, rulemaking process.”

It was the Administrative Procedures Act, under which state agencies bring proposed new rules before a legislative committee for review, that slowed down a Douglas administration plan last year to allow all-terrain vehicles to use state land.

“They’re trying to gut the Administrative Procedures Act,” Kilian said.

Forests, Parks and Recreation Commissioner Jason Gibbs said the exemption from the APA was not in his department’s final proposal.

A much-debated human services policy change also was included in the Challenges for Change package. It would quicken the process of subjecting mental patients to involuntary medication.

“Instead of having the patient linger for 90 days and not get the medication necessary, this would try to advance that decision more promptly,” said Human Services Secretary Robert Hofmann.

Some patient advocates and civil libertarians have urged the state to maintain its careful legal process before being allowed to administer psychiatric drugs when a patient doesn’t want them.

Tom Davis, president of the senior citizens’ group Community of Vermont Elders, took aim at a provision that would allow the state to place a lien against the homes of some nursing home residents to recoup money paid by Medicaid for nursing home care. The state historically has exempted people’s homes when it draws their assets.

He argued that such a policy shift deserves thorough discussion.

“It doesn’t make sense to do it in 10 working days at the end of a (legislative) year when everything is highly confused, to say the least,” Davis said.