43
MCBDD: Renewal of levy is crucial
AUSTINTOWN
Substantial cuts in state subsidies and the loss of state reimbursement for the defunct tangible personal-property tax make renewal of a 2-mill, 5-year levy crucial to maintaining current program levels, said Larry Duck, superintendent of the Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities.
The MCBDD, which provides facilities, programs and services for developmentally disabled Mahoning County residents, has asked the Mahoning County commissioners to place the renewal levy on the November general-election ballot.
The levy has generated about $5,132,545 a year since it was renewed in fiscal year 2006 (July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007), and has been certified to generate $4,850,659 annually if passed in November.
The reasons for the reduced amount of taxes collected from the levy are delinquent tax payments, foreclosures, abatements or other tax reduction or collection provisions, and the area’s economic decline, Duck said.
The levy is 19 years old, and the board is not asking for an increase or a replacement, he added.
The MCBDD’s other property-tax levy, a 3-mill, 5-year measure renewed last November, generated about $11.7 million in fiscal year 2010, which began July 1, 2009. The two levies represent about $17.4 million of the agency’s $24 million operating budget, Duck said.
The board suspected that cuts in state subsidies were likely at some point, and in 2004 adopted a “no-deficit-spending” policy as part of its survival plan, spending only money it is sure it’s going to get.
Staff reduction and cooperation from its labor unions in lowering other employee-related costs have enabled the agency to live within its means and maintain all of its programs, Duck said.
For example, the staff has been reduced from about 304 in January 2005 to about 250. Also, the board has moved heavily into Medicaid waivers, which cuts the local share of service to about 37 percent.
The board spends about $7.7 million a year leveraging some $21 million a year worth of Medicaid waiver-funded services for clients who live at home or in supported-living facilities.
The rest of the cost is paid with federal funds through Medicaid, enabling the agency to use more local-levy revenue for client services.
Waiver is a Medicaid-funding program that allows people to have care in their homes, such as help with personal care, supervision of medications and transportation to and from doctor’s appointments, activities and day programming.
But now the agency is facing revenue reductions it did not anticipate and maintaining programs could be problematic, Duck said.
First, the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities is facing a 10 percent to 20 percent budget cut, which translates to about a 45 percent cut for local boards of developmental disabilities because they are going to bear the largest load of subsidy cuts. The state has no place else to cut, he said.
The other surprise is the likely acceleration of the phase-out of the state reimbursement for loss of tangible personal property tax.
The reimbursements were to have been phased out over seven years beginning next month. To the MCBDD, that would have meant a total loss of $1.62 million.
But if the reimbursement is phased out over three years, as is being discussed, the resulting larger losses over a shorter time will be much more difficult to absorb, Duck said.
By the third year, the agency would have to figure out how to downsize and which programs to cut. That makes passage of the renewal levy all the more important, he added.