[L]awmakers scraped together more than $3 million in cuts at the last minute to bring the budget bill in line with a reduced revenue package.
The last-minute reductions came after the two chambers built a budget that included some $53 million in cuts. The reductions are part of an effort to close a total $113 million gap between projected spending and revenue.
“It seems like this has been a difficult year, maybe we say this every single year,” Senate Appropriations Chair Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, said Friday evening.
The largest portion was a $1.3 million reduction to pharmaceutical reimbursements under Medicaid — a cut originally proposed by the administration and accepted as a floor amendment.
Another $670,000 would come out of an appropriation to support inpatient opiate addition treatment at the Brattleboro Retreat, a psychiatric hospital in southern Vermont. Lawmakers expect that the patients will be treated instead at one of the state’s three residential treatment facilities.
“The information that we have right now is that Vermonters will still have access — there is capacity,” said Rep. Mitzi Johnson, chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
The budget includes an unspecified $1 million cut to the administration, which will likely come from gas prices, procurement, operating expenses, and other miscellaneous savings.
An additional $400,000 from abandoned property would help balance the budget.
“There are a lot of places where the final budget isn’t exactly what the House passed,” Johnson said, “but in collaboration with the Senate we made it a lot better in a lot of places.”
Johnson, a first-time chair, led an effort to try to create a general fund budget model that projects multiple years ahead. She says the final product takes steps toward that goal.
The final budget package does not include the House’s initial proposal to close a correctional facility in Windsor in 2017, but it does include the Senate’s directive to reduce an additional 100 out-of-state prison beds, on top of the governor’s reduction of 100 beds.
The last-minute cuts generated some concerns about the policy impacts, particularly around the reduction to the Brattleboro Retreat.
The cut to inpatient opiate treatment represents a small portion of the Brattleboro Retreat’s budget, which Peter Albert, the facility’s senior vice president, said is upwards of $60 million. For Albert, however, the last minute reduction is worrying given the scope of Vermont’s opiate addiction problem.
“Our concern about this decision is that it because a money decision as opposed to a thoughtful, well-crafted policy decision,” Albert said by phone Friday evening.
The Legislature adopted the cut on the understanding that the Retreat will save money as patients seek treatment at other residential treatment facilities like Valley Vista and Serenity House. But Albert was concerned that the cut will impact opiate addiction services at a time when the demand for treatment is growing.
“If they can take people that’s wonderful, but the system does not yet have the capacity to serve the need,” Albert said.
Johnson said, based on the information they have seen, the cut arises out of an opportunity to maximize other efficiencies.
“This is one of the places where we can provide equal service for Vermonters at a far lesser cost,” Johnson said.
