Revised 2025 Budget Cuts (posted Monday, October 28, 2024)
We would like to thank the Board of County Commissioners for restoring the $5 million our agency has depended on to provide critical services for people with developmental disabilities. While this amount leaves us short of the budget they approved for 2024, it will allow us to restore some of our services and programs in 2025, though many will not be at full capacity. Once we study the impacts, we will provide further details.
An updated list of impacts for 2025 follows:
- We will begin to restore our mental health program for 2025, but the level of capacity is to be determined.
- Effective January 1, 2025, our Early Intervention capacity will be reduced by three providers of special instruction for infants and toddlers who serve as primary service providers to families, and one early childhood development and therapy professional who provides physical therapy services as a primary and secondary service provider. These cuts will reduce our early intervention capacity by 100 families.
- We will phase out PLAY Project support for 3-year-olds with autism spectrum disorder. We will not be able to accept new families for this support after December 31, 2024, and this program will be completely discontinued as of June 30, 2025.
- We will reinstate our Recreation Services program, which originally served more than 1,000 people, but with a much-reduced service capacity.
- We will discontinue our Family Support Services program effective December 31, 2024, which provided adaptive equipment, therapies and camps to 1,637 households.
- We will discontinue funding for the School to Adult Life Transition (SALT) Series for 2025.
- We will discontinue funding for our special needs preschool contract with URS for 2025.
- We will eliminate funds for trainings and membership in MCBDDS’s state association for 2025.
- Provider trainings, including CPR, First Aid, Medication Administration, and provider initial certification, will no longer be offered free of charge.
- Fingerprinting services will no longer be offered free of charge.
- We will lay off 9 full-time and 2 part-time staff positions from the 62 previously announced, which do not include the abovementioned Early Intervention specialists, as well as 44 Recreation Program Aides, which are intermittent positions.
Original 2025 Budget Cuts (information below originally posted Friday, October 18, 2024)
To present a balanced budget for 2025, the Montgomery County Board of Developmental Disabilities (MCBDDS) was required to make $8.9 million in cuts to expenditures.
Since 2006, MCBDDS has experienced a 166 percent increase in the number of individuals served and a 173 percent increase in waiver enrollment. (A waiver is a way to pay for services that support someone with developmental disabilities, whether they are living on their own, with family, with a roommate, or with a provider through Ohio Shared Living.) In 2006, the average utilization cost of an Individual Options (IO) waiver was $44,270.00, and the current average utilization cost as of August 2024 is $88,698.84.
Over this 18-year period, as costs of doing business continued to increase, county boards were also expected to respond to additional mandates related to employment, technology education and usage, and community integration. In January 2024, the State of Ohio also implemented a 32 percent waiver match increase to support direct support professional retention, of which every one of the 88 county boards statewide is expected to pay 8 percent. In the case of MCBDDS, this 8 percent equated to $6 million in 2024, and will be an ongoing expense.
These increases in costs, combined with the loss of revenue that resulted after MCBDDS was required to privatize its adult day services program, and the discontinuation of Tangible Personal Property Tax revenue and other income streams, far exceeded the funds available to MCBDDS through the allocations from the two Montgomery County Human Services levies and the 1 mill levy specifically for developmental disabilities established in 1977 that still collects at 1977 property values.
For the past few years, MCBDDS made up its deficit with $17 million in one-time funding from Montgomery County. Some came from the Human Services Levy, and most recently, MCBDDS declared a fiscal emergency in January 2023 which allowed it to receive American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the County. ARPA funding is not ongoing and was never intended to provide long term sustainability.
Despite intentional management of resources to minimize impact to individuals and families, a deficit still existed, and to present a balanced budget for 2025, MCBDDS was required to make $8.9 million in cuts to expenditures. The only option available was to reduce and eliminate most non-mandated services—services that were especially impactful for families who had chosen to care for an eligible child or adult with developmental disabilities in their home. These discretionary services were ones that county boards statewide were not required to provide, yet allowed MCBDDS to offer more cost-effective alternatives to Medicaid waivers as demand for waivers continued to exceed available financial resources.
Because the Board intentionally streamlined operations over the past decade to maximize use of available revenue, identifying areas to cut was very challenging. Ultimately, the cuts included:
- Reducing capacity in Early Intervention a critical, but non mandated, service
- Discontinuing its Mental Health Supports and Services program, which provided services tailored to the unique needs of more than 125 people dually diagnosed with developmental disabilities and mental illness, and transitioning it to private providers of services.
- Discontinuing our Recreation Program, which provided year-round programming and respite to children and adults with developmental disabilities each year.
- Discontinuing our Family Support Services program, which provided basic home modifications and supports for families of people with developmental disabilities who choose to care for their loved one at home; equipment and training for people with DD and their family members; and respite and camp services for children, youth and adults.
- Discontinuing our high school transition supports and contracts, including our School to Work Employment program and our funding for the School to Adult Life Transition Series.
- Reducing supports to school age children and individuals navigating community systems that typically assume independence of the end user.
- Eliminating 62 full-time staff positions
- Eliminating mileage reimbursement for all staff, including those who travel daily to provide casework and early intervention services
- Eliminating funds for trainings and membership in MCBDDS’s state association
These only represent some of the $8.9 million in cuts that were necessary to balance the budget.