Gov. M.
Jodi Rell's failure to provide promised cost-of-living increases to nonprofit
agencies doing work with the state will have serious repercussions, the
lieutenant governor and dozens of agency officials told legislators
Thursday.
"The governor does not keep the promise. She keeps the crisis,"
Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan told the assembly appropriations committee at a public
hearing.
The budget falls woefully short on health care, especially funds
and programs to help those with mental illnesses, said Sullivan, a Democrat who
replaced Rell last July when she replaced fellow Republican John G. Rowland as
governor.
When Rell proposed her $31 billion, two-year budget earlier
this month, she said she did the best she could to preserve the social safety
net. She did not include the back-to-back 4.5 percent cost-of-living raises that
nonprofit organizations expected through a new "indexing" law that requires
raises for workers under nonprofit contracts to equal raises given state union
employees.
Instead, Rell proposed a 4 percent increase next fiscal year
and no cost of living adjustment the year after that to the nonprofit
organizations hired by the state.
Speakers at the hearing said her best
could be better. They asked the committee to add money to help agencies
struggling with rising health insurance costs, utility bills and other expenses
and a chronic loss of workers to more lucrative state jobs.
Sullivan and
others also said the state is not seeking all the federal reimbursement it can,
including "millions of dollars" in Medicaid matching funds.
Committee
member Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, said lawmakers will investigate whether
the state is getting all the federal assistance it can collect. She also said
the committee will determine the cost of full compliance with the "index" law
passed in 2004.
The governor's cost of living adjustment plan would
result in a 3 percent increase over two years, said Joan Pesce, president of the
Morris Foundation, which helps addicted adult and youths in Waterbury and
surrounding towns.
The result will be cuts in service in nonprofits,
which will push people into state programs, increasing costs to taxpayers, she
said.
"We lose ground every year," said Barry Simon, executive director
of Gilead Community Services, which provides mental health services to 400
people in Middlesex County. "The public/private partnership is being
threatened."
