Legislative Bulletin: 30 Day Amendments Deliver More Cuts to Medicaid

The Governor submitted his 30 day amendments to the state legislature this week, bearing further cuts to Medicaid. Your advocacy is critical in opposing the looming budget cuts to long term care providers. The time to act is now!

Strength in Numbers - Register Now for March 5^th Advocacy Day!

Our second LeadingAge New York Advocacy Day is quickly approaching, and we need your help to send a strong message to the state legislature. Tuesday, March 5th, will be a day of grassroots advocacy focusing on housing, ACF/AL, aging services program, and NORC issues. With a new majority in the Senate and dozens of new legislators, we need your help to educate lawmakers during the final stretch of State budget negotiations. Advocacy days are vital in demonstrating the negative impact of proposed cuts and we need you there to tell your story.

Register today for our March 5^th Advocacy Day and call your legislators’ offices to begin setting up meetings. You can click here to find your legislators. If you have never scheduled a meeting with your lawmakers before, we created a simple scheduling guide to help you get on their calendar. LeadingAge New York staff are happy to help arrange your meetings, coordinate with other members in your area, and even strategize which additional lawmakers you may want to connect with in your region. For questions or assistance setting up legislative meetings, contact Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org.

Your legislators want to hear from you! They or their staff will always make time to meet with constituents. Once your meetings are scheduled, please email your schedule to Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org and Jeff Diamond at jdiamond@leadingageny.org.

30 Day Amendments Delivered to the Legislature

This morning, the Governor submitted the 30 day budget amendments to address the recently announced $2.3 billion budget deficit. The result is a proposed $380 million cut to Medicaid payments (roughly one percent) in each of the next two State Fiscal Years.

The prevalent cuts to Medicaid and long term care demonstrate the importance of your advocacy and participation in local government. The relationships that you form with legislators will be our strongest asset in opposing these deep cuts to long term care providers.

Expanding Advocacy Efforts at Home

While Advocacy Days are impactful, their value can be deteriorated if they are not accompanied by organized and consistent advocacy efforts at home in the district. Following our Advocacy Day’s, we encourage you to schedule meetings in district offices. These meetings can be with legislators of your organization’s district, your personal district, and/or neighboring districts. Connecting with lawmakers of neighboring districts acknowledges that your organization likely employs and serves their constituents and is useful in expanding reach.

There is not one single way to advocate. While meetings in Albany and in the district are substantive, it is also important to build relationships with your legislators outside of the meeting room – at events, on social media and in the press. Social media messages can be specific to our issues of concern or can be used in positive relationship building, such as thanking a lawmaker for taking the time to meet. With the many new members of legislature, it is important to start early with building these relationships. We encourage all LeadingAge members to invite their legislators to events held at the organization and later share social media posts and press releases about the event.

Grassroots advocacy is an ongoing process, but when organizations engage and make themselves known to their lawmakers, the reward is an elected official truly representing the needs of the provider.

LeadingAge New York Call to Action

Senate and Assembly one-house budgets are due on March 13th and there is less than 6 weeks until the SFY 2019-2020 Budget is finalized. There is a lot left to be determined in this year’s budget negotiations, but one thing we know is that we need our LeadingAge membership to frequently reach out to their lawmakers, bringing attention to our key issues and initiatives. Right now, you can click any of the links below to urge your legislators to take action:

We also encourage you to share these links with your colleagues, asking them to share the messages that are impacting your community. The more people bringing these issues to the attention of the legislature, the better.

For more ideas and updates on LeadingAge New York Advocacy efforts, please visit our Advocacy Page.

Cuomo and Trump Discuss New York Taxes

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo met with President Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday to discuss a variety of topics impacting New Yorkers. According to White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere, topics of discussion included abortion, taxes and infrastructure.

In the meeting, Governor Cuomo voiced his concerns about the 2017 Republican tax measure that placed a new cap on how much Americans would be allowed to deduct for state and local taxes from their federal bills. Under the new law, the deduction which helps to lower a taxpayer’s bill and used to be unlimited is now capped at $10,000 dollars. Being a high-tax state, New York estimates the cap will increase federal taxes by $14.3 billion in 2018 for New Yorkers. While the President offered no promises, Cuomo left the meeting with a positive tone. He said in an interview afterward with WCBS Radio that “[Trump] was open to discussing” the deduction cap.

FY19 Federal Budget Bill Moves to President’s Desk

A bi-partisan budget bill to fund the federal government through fiscal year 2019 passed the House and the Senate yesterday. The comprehensive appropriations package expected to be signed into law before midnight tonight includes fiscal year 2019 Housing & Urban Development (HUD) funding.

The HUD portion of the bill provides $51 million for new housing under HUD’s Section 202 Housing for the Elderly program, full funding needed to renew existing rental assistance contracts, including for Section 202 Project Rental Assistance Contracts and Project-Based Rental Assistance, funds to renew Service Coordinators, and $10 million for a new HUD program to assist older adults with the modification of their homes.

Enactment of the bill is a relief for housing providers and residents who had just weathered a 35-day federal shutdown and then a three-week Continuing Resolution, which was attempting to keep afloat HUD programs at fiscal year 2018 levels five months into this new fiscal year.

The President’s decision to sign the bi-partisan legislation was accompanied by an announcement from the White House Rose Garden declaring a national emergency to repurpose funds from other parts of the government to build his proposed wall on the sothern border.

LeadingAge National Announces Final Policy Priorities

In 2018, LeadingAge national held town hall conversations in every state to help establish what would become the 2019 Federal Policy Priorities. Some priorities resemble ones we are pursuing at the state level, such as the need to address the aging services workforce crisis and ensuring proper funding streams are available to the continuum of long term care.

We encourage you to take a look at the priorities LeadingAge will pursue this year and consider joining us at the 2019 Leadership Summit. The Leadership Summit, formerly known as PEAK, is March 17-20, in Washington, D.C. The three-day event features a carefully curated selection of education topics and an opportunity to join pre-scheduled meetings with congress members on Capitol Hill. Click here to register.

Human Services and Housing Budget Hearings

Over the past few weeks, LeadingAge New York has submitted written testimony for both the Housing and the Human Services Joint-Budget Hearings. Information and submitted testimony from each hearing can be found below:

Thursday, January 24^th – Human Services Joint Budget Hearing

- 2019-2020 LeadingAge New York Human Services Testimony

Monday, February 4^th – Housing Joint Budget Hearing

- 2019-2020 LeadingAge New York Housing Testimony

Ami Schnauber, aschnauber@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8854

Sarah Daly, sdaly@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8845