The week prior to the release of the Governor’s budget, we spent time looking ahead at revised strategic plan goals and objectives that will carry the Association forward for a year or more.  That exercise required a short-term reality check, as well as a longer-term framework and discussion on how we can move from here to there.  As painful as strategic planning exercises can be, this one was quite helpful in providing focus to current work, and ideas for where and how the Association can serve its members better.  

Fast-forward then less than a week when the proposed budget was released.  We may not like some of the budget proposals.  We may disagree with the policy direction.  We also question the short-term nature of the budgetary solutions at a time when significant reform is needed, especially when it comes to the financing of long-term care and the need to promote personal responsibility NOW in order to avoid financial catastrophe in the not-so-distant future.  But, it is what is it is—the first move in the budget chess game we are very familiar with.  There is a long game ahead of us until there is an agreement on the balance between reductions and new revenues and how to use the federal funds in a thoughtful manner.  

It is sometimes difficult to gear up for another battle when we have told our same story time and time again.  It has been helpful to me to have had that longer-term strategic planning discussion first to help focus our gaze beyond this current horizon; at the same time we have to take on the budget “enemy” that is right in front of us.  It is true that this year, more than ever, we can’t be absent during the fight for some obvious reasons.  First, other provider groups will experience significantly greater reductions should the Governor’s proposals become reality—they will work hard to protect what they have, even if it means they need to publicly say “steal from nursing facilities”!.  Secondly, the next budget news in early March will be bleaker so we need to be ready again to explain implications of reductions to older adult programs and services in order to avoid even deeper cuts.  

I am starting to gear up for editorial board meetings throughout the state to “keep the heat on” and hope that you can join me in the messaging to your local stakeholder groups.  Right now we are grouping our messages into three key categories that will carry us through the hot summer months of battle:
1.  Access:  when you reduce service payments and eligibility standards, fewer “poor” individuals who need long-term care services will be able to receive them.  The question we ask is:  if you change the size of the safety net, who serves those no longer covered?
2.  Economic Stability:  we have the jobs now….we provide economic stability to communities at all levels…reducing rates will have a direct correlation to labor reductions.
3.  Reform:  this is actually the RIGHT time to move ahead financing reform concepts because the budget outlook for the next several bienniums is not a pretty picture.