BY ROBERT SWIFT
HARRISBURG - Drug and alcohol treatment providers are lobbying lawmakers to spare them from cuts under a proposed block grant for county-run human services.
They want to preserve funding for the Behavioral Health Services Initiative which aids the working poor and Act 152 drug and alcohol programs that assist pregnant women, women with dependent children and individuals in court-ordered treatment programs. The services are provided to
people without private insurance.
These are two of seven human services programs that would be combined in a block grant under Gov. Tom Corbett's fiscal 2012-13 budget proposal. The other programs include community mental health and mental disability services, the human services development fund, homeless assistance and child welfare special grants.
Counties would get more leeway to manage the programs without state mandates, but the proposal calls for a 20 percent, or $168 million overall, cut in state aid.
"The proposal unfairly pits health and human services against each other and will shift the cost of untreated addiction to local emergency rooms and county jails," said Deb Beck, president of the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania.
DASPOP sends members to speak individually with lawmakers at the Capitol about the impact of the cuts. "We have people here constantly," added Beck.
The block grant proposal will likely be among the items most closely negotiated when the final budget is adopted in late June. Lawmakers of both parties have said they want to block the 20 percent cuts.
Corbett said earlier this week he's willing to discuss restoring proposed cuts to education and human services programs, but added those seeking to make restorations should suggest where offsetting cuts can be made. The state's improving tax collections in recent months have shrunk a projected revenue shortfall to about $300 million, but the governor warned that the state's economy remains vulnerable to a downturn.