What happened to those 750 layoffs?

Tom Fahey reports in the Union Leader on the State Employees Associatin promise to fight to keep every job that Governor Lynch wants to cut. He also shows where the cuts are coming.

Nearly half the workers affected by the changes are at the Department of Health and Human Services, the state's largest agency. HHS Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas said in an e-mail to workers that HHS's share of the cuts comes to $8.8 million, and that he'll cut or transfer 150 workers.

The cuts Lynch is making are well below the 750 jobs he and his staff warned would go if the SEA rejected a contract that called for 19 unpaid furlough days over two years.

Lynch said Tuesday that the first estimate of 750 jobs was not based on hard math, but on averages, figuring between $50,000 and $70,000 in wages and benefits per job. As department heads dug deeper into how they'd implement layoffs, the number of cuts began to fall.

State will make cuts to Medicaid, welfare

Kevin Landrigan reports on cutbacks at HHS stemming from low-ball caseload estimates written into the state budget.

The state’s health and human services chief says Medicaid and state welfare assistance spending will have to be cut because the recession has caused caseloads to rise above estimates made only four months ago.

Health & Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas said that unless spending adjustments are made, the Medicaid and Transitional Assistance to Needy Families programs together will spend $10 million more than their budget this year.

“Our belief is that what we need to do as an agency is look at taking further cost containment measures,” Toumpas told the Legislative Fiscal Committee on Tuesday.

Fiscal Accepts More Stimulus Cash

The Legislative Fiscal Committee this morning accepted another $20 million in federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA. This funding comes on top of the $542 million New Hampshire had already received through the federal stimulus package approved by Congress earlier this year.

The $20 million will go towards ten projects spread over the state Departments of Labor, Environmental Services, Health and Human Services, and Resources and Economic Development. The ten-member Fiscal Committee, composed of both Representatives and Senators, accepted every item on today's agenda without debate, as well as four additional items that were taken up without prior public notice.

The only item to generate debate was a transfer of $8,435,000 within the Department of Environmental Services from a Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund to the Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund. Responding to an inquiry from Rep. Neal Kurk (R-Weare), a DES official stated that the move was intended to help communities qualify for 50% loan forgiveness under ARRA, and that the Clean Water fund had a surplus balance not needed to support the program.

Committee members also questioned HHS Commissioner Nick Toumpas extensively about his response to rising caseloads not anticipated in the Department's two-year budget. Toumpas says that acceptance of federal funds under ARRA prevents the state from altering its eligibility requirements for overstretched programs for the next 15 months.

Following its business meeting, the Fiscal Committee reviewed an audit on the state Board of Pharmacy, which found that the six-member voluntary board lacked organizational structure, adequate financial controls, or a formal fraud preventing and detection program.

State House Dome: Mental-health budget cuts on the table

Under the State House Dome in the Union Leader, Tom Fahey reports that Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas is considering cuts to a mental health program, while state bureaucrats are predicting a parade of horrible should they cuts come to pass.

Roland Lamy, executive director of NHCBHA, said the cuts mean longer waits for services, fewer residential beds in community centers, more admissions to the state hospital, higher criminal-justice costs and elimination of transportation services the mentally ill depend on to take care of basic needs. He noted that the budget assumed case loads would increase during the next two years.

"Our position is that approval of these reductions would be effectively turning our backs on those most in need, knowing what the outcome will be," Lamy wrote Erik Riera, administrator of the Bureau of Behavioral Health.

HHS hoping to use vacancies instead of layoffs

Lauren Dorgan spends most of her Capital Beat column discussing the Senate race, but reports on how Health and Human Services is planning to meet the personnel cuts outlined in the state budget:

Commissioner Nick Toumpas wrote a rather hair-raising letter to Health and Human Services employees last week about layoffs.

So far, according to Toumpas's letter, the 46 employees at the soon-to-be-closed Tobey School are the most clearly impacted; five were laid off last week and four others were reassigned to the Sununu Center or to the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Services.

Beyond that, to meet the budget, Toumpas wrote, the department needs to "reach and maintain a 10 percent vacancy rate," which equals 335 vacancies. As of last week, the department had just over 250 vacancies. "Hopefully, retirements and normal attrition will get us close to the 10 percent mark, and we will not have to resort to additional layoffs to achieve this reduction," Toumpas wrote. (more)

HHS accounts for half of New Hampshire's General Fund, and would presumably have to come up with half of the $25 million in personnel savings tacked onto the back of the state budget.

Telegraph all over state budget

Kevin Landrigan blankets the state budget this morning, with a pair of pieces.

First, he reports on the growing shortfall in the state Highway Fund, along with the hopes for free money to start flowing from the Obama Administration:

A federal stimulus package from President-elect Barack Obama would help pay for much-delayed projects, but does little to deal with a projected, $153 million deficit facing the Department of Transportation, Commissioner George Campbell said Monday.

"A lot of people think if we get a 100 percent fully funded stimulus package that it's going to solve all our problems, but it's not,'' Campbell told a legislative commission that will soon prepare a final report on the state highway fund.

Then, Landrigan turns his attention to health care, as State Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas says that rising health care costs will keep going up:

"A business as usual approach will not be available. We need to fundamentally examine what we do and how we do it," Toumpas said.

Spending to maintain current services from all sources (including federal grants and local property taxes) would go up 16.5 percent over the same period. The total health and human services budget would increase from $3.3 billion in the current two years to $4.4 billion in the next two. For the past several months, Toumpas has engaged in an agency-wide dialogue with stakeholders to figure out how to more efficiently deliver services.

"Our ability to tweak rates and cut on the margins is just not going to fly moving forward," Toumpas said.

Both Campbell and Toumpas are telling legislators that the structural problems in their departments goes far beyond the current economic slowdown. State budget writers have been placing far too much blame on national economic conditions, and not enough on their own choices. They will have to make far different choices this year in order to close that gap.