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April 25, 2017Late last week, the House and Senate passed their respective budgets for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2017. Lawmakers will spend much of the remaining two weeks of the Session hammering out the differences between the two spending plans.
As legislators prepare for budget negotiations, the FCCB outlined recommendations on several priorities in a letter to House Appropriations Chairman Carlos Trujillo:- Reject Nursing Home Prospective Payment System Proposal - The House Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee will be considering a revision of a proposal it rejected earlier in the session that simply redistributes funds among nursing homes, with a disproportionate negative impact on higher quality, more efficient homes.
- Continue Refugee Resettlement - The House budget reflects a possible discontinuation of Florida's Refugee Resettlement program. The current framework administered by the Department of Children and Families is sufficient to warrant its continuation, and the stability afforded in that regard is beneficial to partners like Catholic Charities as national refugee policy is in flux.
- Support Full Funding of Affordable Housing Trust Fund - Neither chamber appropriates the full $292.4 million available for improving access to this basic need for lower-income Floridians.
- Establish Criminal Justice Reform Task Force - Rather than continuing to address criminal justice reform measures each year in a piecemeal fashion, FCCB supports the Senate's allocation to fund a task force to undertake a comprehensive analysis of Florida's criminal justice system. A smaller task force is preferable to none. Establishment of the task force was a Catholic Days at the Capitol priority.
- Mitigate Cuts to Hospital Reimbursement - Medicaid funding contributes significantly to the system delivering care to all Floridians.
- Increase Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) Scholarship Amounts - The VPK per-child scholarship amount remains lower than it was in 2007.