Department of Human Services

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 22:27

The Fiscal Year 2013 total fund recommendation of $5.9 billion is an increase of $194 million or 3.4% over the Fiscal Year 2012 total funds of $5.7 billion.

Facility Rack-Up: In past years, the Administration has provided funding detail by individual facilities. For FY13 the Administration did not disclose this information.

Facility Closures: In January the Governor announced two facility closures Tinley Park Mental Health Center and Jacksonville Developmental Center. Tinley is slated for closure July 1, 2012 while JDC will close at the end of September 2012. Included in the announcement was a statement that a total of four4 Developmental Centers, the first being JDC, will be closed over the next two and half years.

With the FY 13 budget comes two additional closure announcements. Singer Developmental Center and Murray Mental Health Center will close in the fourth quarter of FY13. No figures on how much the closures will save the state were provided.

For the second year in a row Child Care Services is being funded by both GRF and other funds. When this initially happened in FY12 the Administration portrayed this as a one-time event. But FY13 has an additional $425 million Employment and Training Fund component.

Community Mental Health Grants are decreasing by $58.4 million or 40.5% below FY12 GRF appropriations. As mentioned above, the Department did not provide information on specific facilities. The Mental Health Grants and Administration all funds request is $49.2 million, or 7.5% below FY12 appropriations. A few of the options available to the Department in order to cut costs are to serve a smaller population, eliminate all non-Medicaid eligible patients, reduce rates, or a combination of these and other options.

Developmental Disability Purchase of Care GRF is increasing by $195.6 million or 25.1% over FY12 appropriations. Again, the Administration provided no facility-specific data so the only way to proceed is by looking at the Developmental Disabled Department as a whole. The DD Division is increasing by $195.6 million, or 23.4% over FY12 appropriations. It appears the Department is using the increase to maintain the current payment cycle and annualize previous year transitions costs.

The Home Services Program seems to have joined the Child Care Program in terms of a funding shift. Approximately $240 million GRF is being pushed onto the newly created Home Services Medicaid Trust Fund. It remains unclear what the Department's rationale is for shifting the funding from GRF to another state fund.

Mental Health Community Transitions is increasing by $13.6 million, or 60.1% over FY12 estimated expenditures. This is of particular note, because as mentioned above, one of the few items discernable in budget documents is that costs for Community Mental Health are drastically decreasing. No explanation is given why transition costs would increase.

The Temporary Assistance Need Program is increasing by $114.9 million or 122.6% above FY12 GRF. It is possible that the Agency’s $73.6 million GRF supplemental request went entirely into the program's FY12 line. If this were the case the FY13 request would be a $41.3 million GRF, or 24.7% increase over FY12 appropriation.

A new $100,000 other state funds Autism Awareness program is included in the budget.

The Governor's office has provided the following information regarding the mental health and developmental disabilities centers and the 24 local Dept. of Human Services Offices.

Tinley Park Mental Health Center