DOVER – It’s business as usual for members of the Delaware General Assembly’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC), even in a budget year that is anything but routine.
For over a month now, panel members have gathered at Legislative Hall almost every day to get an overview of the budget plans presented by the offices that run the functions of government.
They have heard from education, transportation, the prison system, the judiciary, IT, labor, economic development and more.
Now, it’s crunch time. The JFC is in the final stretch of its six weeks of hearings dealing with a $3.4 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2012. It’s a budget that Governor Jack Markell has already said will produce pain.
Committee chairman Representative Dennis P. Williams (D-Wilmington) is in his 14th year on the Joint Finance Committee, and says this is the worst he’s seen it.
“I was here when we had money. I was here when we had a little bit of money,” said Williams. “Now, I’m here when we have no money.”
Cabinet officials, including Delaware Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) Secretary Rita Landgraf, are pleading their case for sustained or increased funding.
DHSS is second only to the Department of Education in the amount of state funding it utilizes. It runs state service centers, the Delaware Psychiatric Center, divisions that serve the disabled and the blind, the Division of Public Health, and many more state functions.
“We are committed to working within our means, while preserving the core services that truly impact those we serve,” Landgraf told the JFC this week. “However, you will see that many areas of our budget will not be able to receive funding at their prior levels and some are slated for elimination. This will include programs that I strongly support, but we cannot spend money we do not have.”
- DHSS Secretary Rita Landgraf
Delaware Department of Health and Social Services Secretary Rita Landgraf
Landgraf outlines the challenges DHSS faced in developing a budget this year.
Some of the programs under Health and Social Services are ones that Delawareans have turned to first during the economic downturn. 132,371 Delawareans were receiving Food Supplement benefits (formerly known as Food Stamps) as of December 2010, an increase of 22% from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the Medicaid caseload in Delaware grew 11.9% in one year and stood at 195,859 people in January 2011.
Federal stimulus funding that helped the state meet its Medicaid burden is also going away.
“We had to make some really hard decisions for this coming budget year,” said Landgraf.
Questions from lawmakers got a bit pointed at one JFC session. Senator Bruce Ennis (D-Smyrna) wondered if there was drug-testing for people receiving assistance. Landgraf said currently her department “lacked that authority.” Representative John Mitchell (D-Elsmere) raised the issue of whether spending of the assistance was monitored to reduce the possibility of fraud and misuse of funds.
“[Lawmakers] are a little tense right now,” said Williams, “because they want to make sure that when they craft this budget, that the budget’s not bloated.”
- State Rep. and JFC chair Dennis P. Williams (D-Wilmington North)
State rep. and JFC chair Dennis P. Williams
Williams believes the DHSS budget is a good example of the challenging budget issues Delaware faces this year.
Williams discusses what next for the JFC after hearings conclude.
Williams expects further heated discussion soon, as lawmakers take up a proposal from Governor Markell to increase the salaries of superior court judges. The JFC will “mark up” the spending bill in the spring. The state’s revenue forecasting panel, the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council (DEFAC) also has a few more meetings before the June 30th deadline for a balanced budget.
Landgraf says occasionally DEFAC produces a pleasant surprise with the revenue numbers, but it’s not something she’s counting on.
“Sometimes it’s not a good surprise and actually the revenues may decline,” said Landgraf.
At the same session, Williams and other members of the Joint Finance Committee also heard appeals on behalf of early intervention childhood development programs, services for people with disabilities, efforts to serve and employ the visually impaired, and finding options to help Delaware’s homeless.
The JFC tackled all these proposals from just one department in the course of just one afternoon.
