How to Impact a Stalled State Budget

The State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2021-2022 began on July 1, 2021 with no budget passed by the NC General Assembly for the year.  The Senate had passed their version of the budget in late June and the House passed their version in August.  Reports indicate that the House and Senate have negotiated their differences and developed a compromise budget proposal.  Typically, the negotiated version would go the House and Senate floors, be passed and move on to the Governor.  NCGA leaders have stated that they are negotiating the legislative compromise with the Governor before it is finalized at the NC General Assembly.  State government is operating on the previous fiscal year funding levels until a budget is passed and signed into law. 

Perhaps the biggest setback in not having a new budget in place is that all new or increased funding that is included in the SFY2021-2022 budget hasn’t been allocated and will not be until a new budget is signed into law.  Here are just a few items included in the stalled budget proposal:

• Increase in direct care worker pay rates
• Increase in Innovations waiver slots
• Increase funds to school units for children with disabilities
• Extends Medicaid eligibility for parents of children in foster care

Stakeholders may believe that there isn’t much to do to impact the budget at this point.  Now may actually be a critical time to lend your voice to the budget debate.  We asked NC Autism Society Director of Public Policy, Jennifer Mahan, messages that  stakeholders could convey about the budget and which leaders it should be directed to at this point in time. 

“Because we have not seen the final budget that is under negotiation and don’t know which numbers they are using during negotiations, it would be worth reaching out to the Governor’s office and budget leaders in the House and Senate and urge them to use the more favorable numbers in each version, including:

• Thank legislators for recognizing the need for supports and services for people with disabilities with additional waiver slots and the special education ADM fund.
• Urge them to use the HOUSE funding numbers for recurring funding to increase the wages of direct support staff across community services so the new waiver slots (and other services) have staffing.
• Urge them to use the HOUSE numbers for Innovations slots and increase the minimum number of waiver slots to 2,000.
• Urge them to keep the House provision to increase the special education funding cap to 13% and to study funding for special education in the House version of the budget.
• Urge them to keep the Senate provision on special education due process hearings.
• Continue to emphasize that people with disabilities and health care conditions need other services and supports: talk about what YOU need

We are also hearing that the Governor is negotiating for extending Medicaid to people in the health care coverage gap: you can support that effort by asking House and Senate leaders to extend Medicaid to people without access to affordable health care.”

[The last ASNC alert with a list of budget leaders is here https://www.autismsociety-nc.org/state-budget-update/ The Governor can be reached here https://governor.nc.gov/contact/contact-governor-cooper ]

For a recap of the House and Senate budget versions, see the i2i August 2021 article.