OACAC, Burrell face possible budget cuts

OACAC
President Bush has proposed eliminating a 35-year-old anti-poverty program, the Community Services Block Grant, currently funded through the Department of Health and Human Services. The loss of the $637 million nationwide program would leave a $1.2 million hole in the budget of OACAC, a 40-year-old, private not-for-profit agency.
OACAC’s neighborhood centers that provide energy assistance to low-income families, are directly threatened by the cuts. The core funding for the programs would be eliminated, along with about 40 jobs, said Carl Rosenkranz, executive director.
OACAC’s total budget for its eight programs was $23 million in 2004, Rosenkranz said.
“That’s a combination of federal, state and local funding, and we reached over 35,000 households with the programs that we have,” he said.
Budget cuts would directly affect the 10 neighborhood centers that OACAC operates in the 10 counties that it serves – Barry, Christian, Dade, Dallas, Greene, Lawrence, Polk, Stone, Taney and Webster.
“They’re the first point of contact for low-income people in need of services,” Rosenkranz said.
Each center has a minimum of four employees.
“We would no longer have neighborhood centers, which means we could no longer administer the energy crisis intervention program, and that is done on a coordinated 10-county level,” Rosenkranz said.
The neighborhood centers also act as a point of contact for OACAC employees to refer clients to other agencies.
Without that point of contact, Rosenkranz said, potential clients might fall through the cracks.
Effects of the budget cuts also would trickle down to the counties OACAC serves.
“The effect would be felt on the communities in which we have programs, the vendors we work with, the businesses that we work with and landlords that work with our programs,” he said.
About $50,000 a year, he said, is now spent on rent for OACAC’s neighborhood centers.
Another department could possibly pick up funding, but Rosenkranz isn’t hopeful.
The CSBG and 17 other programs were moved to the proposed Strengthening America’s Communities Grant Program, under the Department of Commerce. If approved, the new grant program would set aside $3.7 billion for all 18 programs in 2006.
The same programs received a total of $5.7 billion in 2005, Rosenkranz said.
“The chances are rather limited that it would ever get any funding because you’d have 18 programs fighting for funding that’s reduced a third from its current level. It’s like a battle to stay alive and some won’t,” Rosenkranz said.

Burrell Behavioral Health
“It is an extraordinarily expensive way to try to save money,” said Todd Schaible, vice president of Burrell Behavioral Health, of possible state budget cuts.
Gov. Blunt’s proposed fiscal 2006 budget would cut $41 million from the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s general revenue for community treatment and rehabilitation services.
A reduction in state matching funds would cut $20 million in federal funds from psychiatric services and alcohol- and drug-treatment programs. And $24 million in federal funds for mental retardation and development disability services would be cut.
If passed, state budget cuts would eliminate “well in excess of $1 million” from Burrell’s budget, which Schaible estimated this year at $27 million.
The cuts may have an impact on Burrell employees, but Schaible declined to say whether any jobs would be lost or hours reduced.
“We’ll adapt to that. It’s not an issue of the agency’s survival. It is an issue of the well-being and, in some instances, potential survival of some of the people we serve,” he said.
Schaible estimates that 800 to 1,000 patients who have “serious and persistent mental illnesses” could lose services
provided by Burrell.

E-mail petition
To fight the cuts, Burrell staff and others have circulated an e-mail petition asking the governor to abandon his plans to cut funding for people who receive community-based services through the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
As of March 3, the petition had 8,768 signatures. The petition, created by Missouri Federation of Advocates for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, is online at www.petitiononline.com/
fmamhsa1.
Without the services Burrell provides, Schaible said many patients would turn to hospital emergency rooms.
“We estimate that there will be an increase of over 1,000 admissions to psychiatric hospitalization in the course of one year, just in this area,” he said.
For every dollar the state saves in tax cuts, he estimates between $5 and $8 will be spent in hospitals. One day in the hospital costs approximately $600, he said, and the average length of stay is about eight days.
In his 17 years with Burrell, Schaible said, the center has gone through many budget adjustments. It’s the nature of any business, he said.
“Agencies will do OK and employees will do OK. We adjust, and, even if it happens to affect us at an employment level, that’s tough times and you go on,” Schaible said. “I honestly believe that this kind of action very easily can result in some of those (patients) losing their lives.”
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