In my last blog post (Will Disabled People Bear the Brunt of Shared Sacrifice?), I discussed the state of play with the fiscal year (FY)
2025 DDS budget, in particular the mayor's proposed elimination of the clothing
allowance for people getting residential services and the curtailment of
administrative fees paid to provider agencies.
Fortunately, the chair of the Facilities and Family Services committee,
councilmember Janeese Lewis George, was able to partially restore both amounts
in the budget finally passed by the full council, although there are slight
differences in the impact this will have on later-year budgets, as explained by
Director Andy Reese in the last ten minutes of June’s DDS forum (June 28 2024 DDS forum, starting at minute 1:11:00). To recap and summarize:
- Historically, residential providers have
received $600/year ($50/month) for clothing purchases on behalf of people they
support. The mayor’s budget proposed to
remove the clothing allowance entirely, but the council restored 56% of the
cut, so in FY 2025 the individual clothing allowance will be $336/year, or
$28/month. (In terms of the budget, the council restored $416,000 of the
proposed $744,000 reduction.) The
further news is that this amount will become part of the base, or continuing,
budget going forward as planning for FY 2026 and later years begins.
- A second proposal was to reduce the total
administrative fees, which are negotiated individually with residential
providers under human care agreements (HCAs), by half - from the FY 2024 amount
of $2.9 million to a little more than $1.4 million in FY 2025. The council restored $900,000, so the FY 2025
total is a little over $2.3 million – but unlike the clothing allowance, this is a
onetime restoration of funds and will not be in the base, or continuing, budget
going forward, which means the “starting point” for FY 2026 will be $1.4
million unless the additional funding can be found somewhere.
The June 28 forum also included an explanation from
Reese that there have been payment delays, though no outright budget
reductions, from RSA to provider agencies over this past year (FY 2024). Reese explained (in the last five minutes of
the June 28 recording) that the complicated way in which RSA grant funds are
provided and expended did trigger delays and led to internal discussions of a
possible RSA waitlist, but that has so far not occurred.
As I pointed out last month, and as Reese reiterated in the June forum, reductions to DDS funding and other parts of the DC budget for FY 2025 spell greater difficulty in future funding deliberations than we have seen in many years. For this reason, Reese has proposed to begin talking with advocates in September about how to shape the FY 2026 budget in a way that protects the most crucial priorities for the disability community in DC. So stay tuned for more information on that, and prepare to get involved in those discussions this coming fall and spring - Councilmember Lewis George’s fantastic staffer on our issues, Sebastian Weinmann (sweinmann@dccouncil.gov), made a special point of saying that the excellent turnout by advocates was what had made it possible for Lewis George to accomplish what she was able to in the council’s FY 2025 budget revisions.
And now, an important footnote: DC Quality Trust, a unique organization with deep and meaningful roots in DC, will hold its annual gala next month at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, 1000 H St NW (QT Summer Breeze Gala on August 18). It’s hard to overstate how much difference QT
makes, in ways large and small, sometimes visibly but often behind the scenes -
so turn out in force to show you believe in QT's mission and want them around
for decades to come! DO NOT MISS THIS if you're in town, and if you aren't, be
sure to donate anyway!