They Won't Know Anyway

In 1999 then-Representative Kevin Goodno was one of the key legislators involved in passing a law that would expand the number of Minnesota residents who could apply for a Mental Retardation and Related Conditions Waiver. The program, designed to allow retarded or otherwise mentally challenged people to receive services in their own homes, had been long touted as a win/win proposition: a cost-effective and humane way to help families find alternatives to lifetimes spent in expensive institutions. But the waiting list had become so long that some families were waiting up to a dozen years to get into the program. So the Legislature's decision to reduce or eliminate the waiting list by June 30, 2003 seemed likely to benefit both taxpayers and program participants.

The 1999 law resulted in a concerted push by the Department of Human Services to obtain waivers for as many people as possible during a two-month open-enrollment period held in 2001.

The only problem was, open enrollment brought so many new people forward that it jammed up the system. The idea was that the new enrollees would get into the program during those two months, and then over time they would develop service plans and get the money to pay providers. Now that many of those new waiver recipients have had time to ramp up their services, their expanding needs have added up to a bigger commitment of dollars than the state is willing to pay.

"It was a wildly successful effort--more successful than anybody expected," says Bud Rosenfield, an attorney with the Minnesota Disability Law Center.

But, he adds, "as more and more [people received] services, the costs of the program went up. Now they're basically saying we don't have that much money. We don't want to spend so much."

For Cindy Johnson and her daughter, Jenna Morrissette, the waiver seemed a blessing. Morrissette, 20, has been severely disabled all her life due to cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder. After waiting 12 years, she finally received a waiver in 2000, allowing her family to bring support services into their home, buy needed computer and wheelchair equipment, and modify their car. Not only is Morrissette living more comfortably at home, she has become a part of her community. She is now taking community college classes, holding down a job, and volunteering at a veterinary clinic.

But in February, Johnson received a notice that funds her daughter had been approved to receive through June 30 would be cut in half, retroactive to January 1. Why? In view of the state's coming fiscal crunch, DHS had gone though a process of "rebasing" the program's budget. Practically speaking, that means benefit cuts. "My heart was broken for her. It was like a death sentence. I knew I couldn't take care of her," Johnson says.

The so-called rebasing sparked two separate federal lawsuits against DHS and its new Pawlenty-appointed commissioner--who happens to be Kevin Goodno. One suit, brought by the Association of Residential Resources in Minnesota (ARRM), questions whether the state got proper permission from the federal government, which helps pay for the program, to make what are effectively benefit cuts. (ARRM's executive director Bruce Nelson says that federal law prevents the state from cutting the waiver program purely for budgetary reasons.)

The other suit, on behalf of several participants whose funds were cut, maintains that the cuts themselves weren't fairly meted out and varied greatly from county to county. Bud Rosenfield, who filed that claim, contends that a greater percentage of waiver cuts fell on families who were trying to take care of their disabled children or relatives at home.

Officials at DHS insist that the waiver program will continue to grow overall, but the rate of expansion needs to be pared back. They also argue that the program was not necessarily compromised by the decision to add recipients, but because of higher-than-expected growth in some participants' expenditures. "We can't pay for everything," says Shirley Patterson, DHS's disability director. "So what would be most important?"

Rosenfield and other advocates counter that the state simply failed to produce an accurate projection of the cost bump involved in opening up the waiting list.

So the waiting continues. In April, a federal judge heard arguments in the ARRM lawsuit and instated a temporary restraining order, so most of the proposed cuts are on hold for now. In the meantime, affected families can do little but wait until the courts render a decision.