Needy face $80M in cuts

No senior under the Medicare Part D prescription drug program will lose coverage, an official said.

COLUMBUS (AP) — The state agency that administers programs for poor and low-income families is cutting almost $80 million from its budget, including millions of dollars for a welfare program.

Records obtained by The Associated Press Wednesday show the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services also is cutting back on funding for adoption services, money to detect Medicaid fraud and funds to administer the state’s child support program.

In many cases the money being cut goes to county agencies that manage programs for Ohio citizens. It will be up to the counties to decide how to rework their local budgets to deal with the loss of state dollars, which could lead to cuts in services to Ohioans.

As the economy has worsened, greater numbers of Ohioans have been showing up at county agencies looking for help for the first time. The latest news led to renewed calls from advocates of the poor for a second federal stimulus package to assist state budgets.

About $36 million in state cuts will come from money that had been set aside for the Medicare Part D prescription drug program but is no longer needed, said Ohio Job and Family Services spokesman Dennis Evans. No senior currently under the program will lose coverage, he said.

The agency made the cuts to comply with Gov. Ted Strickland’s request that most state agencies cut 4.75 percent from their budgets. The state faces a projected budget deficit of $540 million during the final year of the state’s two-year, $52 billion budget.

Earlier this year Strickland announced a previous round of cuts that totaled $733 million.

Job and Family Services was able to avoid making cuts that would have an impact on county agency operations during the first round of trimming.

“In our earlier cuts we took the brunt of it internally, so that the counties didn’t realize any of those cuts,” Evans said. “This time around, while there weren’t any programs that we directly eliminated, we couldn’t shield the counties.”

Strickland ordered that two of the department’s programs be protected from budget cuts — the $9.3 billion the state sets aside to provide Medicaid to low-income Ohioans until receiving a federal reimbursement, and $25 million for disability assistance.

The department will be cutting $12.7 million — or about 5 percent — of the $267.6 million it had been spending in its share of the federal-state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The program, signed into law by former President Clinton, provides welfare benefits to the poor while pushing them to find employment.

The agency is also cutting $4 million, or 5 percent, of the money it had set aside for adoption services, and 5 percent, or nearly $400,000, out of $8.2 million set aside for the state’s child support program.

The cuts come at a bad time, said Brian Gregg, spokesman for the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services, which serves the Cincinnati area.

“At the same time we are being cut, we’re actually being asked to serve more people,” he said.

About 35 percent of his department’s clientele are members of the working class who have fallen on hard times and are making their first trip to the county department, Gregg said.

Roughly one out of 10 Ohioans are now on food stamps, said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks.

“Our food pantry and soup kitchen lines are continuing to grow longer,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “Our families are telling us there’s no other place to cut their budgets.”

She questioned whether money from the state’s rainy day fund, currently at $750 million, should be used to prevent some of the cuts. But Strickland said earlier this month he didn’t want to dip into the fund because he feared the budget situation could grow worse.