In my last blog post I was encouraging folks to attend the June 16 hearing on the DDS budget. That hearing has now taken place, and you can find the video by going to this page and selecting the June 16 hearing – the Office of Disability Rights and the Mayor’s Office of Deaf, Deafblind, and Hard of Hearing come first and are extremely interesting themselves, but the DDS segment starts about an hour and 53 minutes (1:53) into the video.
Since the hearing, Councilmember Lewis George has issued her committee report. The most notable elements in the committee report are: 1) a one-time increase of $1 million in administrative fees for DDA provider agencies but 2) more confusingly, a cut of $1.7 million in operating funds for the HCBS waiver budget. The committee report states that this “1.4% reduction should not diminish services to those people receiving waiver supports and services from DDA,” but DDS seems to believe otherwise so it seems discussions between the administration and the council are continuing on this. Hopefully this confusion will be resolved in the next week.
The first full-council vote on the FY2026 budget will take place on July 14, with the final budget vote scheduled for July 28.
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