Maryland Priorities?
A Series on What’s Being Cut

in the Governor’s FY 2006 Budget

Work Supports and Other Safety Net Services

For other reports in this series go to Maryland Priorities?

Child Care Purchase of Care

FY 2005 Appropriation: $112 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $103 million

Purchase of Care provides assistance to help very low-income families afford the cost of child care. State funding for Purchase of Care was reduced by approximately $25 million in FY 04. This cut was continued for FY 05. The governor’s budget would cut funding for child care even further for FY 06.

Because of reduced funding, the state froze enrollment for all low-income families in 2003, allowing only families who were current or recent recipients of Temporary Cash Assistance to receive new assistance.

According to the Department of Legislative Services, in FY 2006 only 15 percent of families who meet the financial eligibility requirements for receiving assistance will get any help purchasing child care.

Upon freezing new enrollments for the program for non-welfare families, the state started a waiting list for other low-income families. Within two years, more than 19,000 children were added to the waiting list to receive assistance. More than 2,500 children are on the waiting list in each of Baltimore City, and Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties. Anne Arundel, Charles, and Washington Counties have more than 700 children each on the waiting list. In the meantime, low-income families must either leave their children at home alone, find free care, or not work.

Child Care Resource and Referral Network

FY 2005 Appropriation: $3.8 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $1.8 million

Child Care Credential Program

FY 2005 Appropriation: $248,000
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $1.1 million

Child Care Resource and Referral Network helps parents find child care at thirteen nonprofit resource centers around the state. Funding for child care resource centers was cut by $2.1 million in FY 2004 and continued in FY 2005.

Update: On March 17 Governor Ehrlich amended his original budget submission to add another $1 million to the Child Care Resource and Referral Network, funding the Network at $2.8 million for FY 2006. However, the House of Delegates cut the entire $1 million in restored funds; the Senate cut $800,000.

The Child Care Credential Program provides training and technical assistance to improve the quality of child care provided.

Family Support Centers
FY 2005 Appropriation:$4.8 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $4.0 million

Maryland’s family support centers are an award-winning approach to improving the chances of healthy child development by addressing the multiple needs of low-income parents and supporting their efforts to provide for their children. (Friends of the Family is a winner of the Harvard University Innovations in Government Award, www.innovations.harvard.edu/awards.html?id=3513

Family support centers are community-based, community-run centers that provide parenting classes, support groups, GED classes, child care, and counseling to link parents to other services such as drug treatment or public assistance.

Due to cuts in state funding in FY 2005, six out of 24 family support centers were forced to close. Proposed cuts for FY 2006 will force the closure of additional family support centers.

Temporary Disability Assistance
FY 2005 Maximum Benefit: $185 per month
FY 2006 Maximum Benefit: $185 per month

This program provides assistance to very-low and no-income single adults who have severe disabilities but who have not yet qualified for federal disability assistance. The $185/month benefit must be paid back to the state when individuals receive retroactive federal payments.

For individuals who have temporary disabilities, benefits can be received for only 9 months in any 36-month period.

The governor’s budget proposal provides no funding to allow for an adjustment in benefits.

This program has endured severe cuts over the last decade. A predecessor program, General Assistance, had nearly 26,000 recipients in December 1991 receiving an average benefit of $186.24.

Today’s program had 13,203 recipients in November 2004 receiving an average benefit of $135.94.

The maximum benefit is less than 25 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. As an example of the purchasing power of the maximum benefit, a recipient could purchase one large coffee and a muffin per day from a national coffee chain if they had no other expenses.

Temporary Cash Assistance
FY 2005 Maximum Benefit: $482 per month, family of 3
FY 2006 Maximum Benefit: $482 per month, family of 3

Temporary Cash Assistance, as the name implies, provides cash assistance to very low-income families with children. Under Maryland law, the combination of maximum temporary cash assistance and federal food stamp benefits equals 61 percent of state’s “minimum living level,” a measure that approximates the federal poverty level.

The governor’s proposed budget for FY 2006 does not include funding to adjust benefits to meet the inflationary increase in the minimum level.

At the current benefit level, a single parent with two children and who earns $603 per month makes too much to qualify for any cash assistance benefits.

Housing Rental Allowance Program
FY 2005 Appropriation: $1.7 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $1.7 million

Rental Housing Production
FY 2005 Appropriation :$11.7 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $13 million

Partnership Rental Housing
FY 2005 Appropriation:$6 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $6 million

The Governor’s Commission on Housing Policy estimated in their 2004 Final Report that over the next ten years the state would experience a shortage of 157,000 affordable rental housing units. The production cost of meeting this demand would be $19.5 billion.

Despite this demand, the governor’s FY 2006 budget reduces state general fund spending for the Department of Housing and Community Development by 6.8 percent. The overall budget is expected to increase, largely in anticipation of federal funding that will provide for an additional 130 subsidized housing contracts.

The Rental Allowance Program provides monthly rental assistance to low-income families who are at risk of losing their homes.

Rental Housing Production and Partnership Rental Housing are the state’s two primary rental housing production programs. Since 1995, funding for these two programs has been reduced by more than 40 percent. For FY 2006, the governor’s budget proposed a modest increase in funding for Rental Housing Production. In addition to the increase in state funds, $5 million in federal funds will be available for Rental Housing Production.

The cuts articulated below are discussed in greater detail in a separate Budget Brief.

Non-Emergency Health Care for Legal Immigrants
FY 2005 Appropriation: $7 million
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $ 0

Under this cut, pregnant women who are legal immigrants but have been in the U.S. for less than five years will lose access to prenatal care. In addition, their existing children will no longer have access to preventive health care services.

Rare and Expensive Case Management Services (REM)

FY 2005 Appropriation:$6 million (½ state, ½ federal)
FY 2006 Governor’s Budget: $ 0

This program provides special case management services and increased access to specialists for children who have rare, complex, and expensive illnesses (such as cystic fibrosis and spina bifida).

This program was initially because the chronic conditions of these children were so rare and complex that Medicaid Managed Care Organizations were not likely to have sufficient case management services nor appropriate specialists in their networks to provide the necessary care.

Under the governor’s budget proposal, the program would be eliminated and children would be forced to enroll in Managed Care Organizations like the rest of the Medicaid population.