How Kasich team pulled fast one on county workers

Columbus Dispatch: In terms of legacy, most observers would have agreed that former Gov. John Kasich rode out of office in January as something of a rare Republican champion for Medicaid and the poor and disabled Ohioans who rely on it for their health care.

But that horse went lame last week with news that the Kasich administration blind-sided the state’s 88 county Medicaid programs with millions of dollars in funding cuts that went far beyond projections.

Thankfully, by week’s end, county job and family services directors got some breathing room and learned they won’t have to take drastic measures to absorb the cuts this calendar year.

Granted, there will always be glitches when one state administration ends and another begins.

But it is more common to find problems like this – an unexpected and last-minute change in how counties are paid for administering an essential program – when state leadership changes from one party to another.

For the outgoing Republican Kasich administration to have so badly bungled this transition to the incoming Republican administration of Gov. Mike DeWine suggests it wasn’t just a fumble but maybe something more deliberate. And we’ll tack on “cowardly” for good measure.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The story that emerged last week is that in the waning moments of their watch, Kasich’s Medicaid team took it upon itself to examine how county departments of job and family services were handling various responsibilities to assist low-income and disabled Ohioans in receiving health-care coverage through Medicaid as well as food stamps or even temporary cash assistance.

Ohio’s model of programs for federal-state assistance to the poor leaves it up to counties to structure how Medicaid, SNAP and welfare benefits are handled.

“This is a good example of where ‘state-supervised, county-administered’ falls through,” said Joel Potts, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association.

The unnecessary tizzy also highlights differences between a close-mouthed Kasich crew that dropped funding cuts on counties at the last minute and a confidence-inspiring DeWine team that is continuing current funding levels through 2019 and working with counties on a solution in the next state budget.

Some former Kasich administration staffers said the county cuts were not a governor’s-office initiative, nor even on executive-staff radar, but that doesn’t excuse poor handling of a situation that threatened jobs of county workers and services to the poor.

Central to the issue is whether county staff are working with clients on Medicaid benefits as opposed to SNAP and other services.

As Potts explains it, the federal government recognized it was a heavy lift when Ohio expanded eligibility for Medicaid in January 2014 to go from about 2 million to nearly 3 million covered lives almost overnight. It allowed the state to pay 75 percent of the costs for county workers administering the Medicaid program. But workers processing just food stamps or other benefits would not necessarily get the enhanced match.

STATE MATCHES CUT 50 PERCENT

Then 10 days before Kasich’s second term ended in mid-January, state Medicaid officials notified counties that the matching rate for administrative expenses would drop to 50 percent on July 1, the start of the new state fiscal year.

The state initially predicted a resulting drop in funds of about $2 million statewide, later updated to $2 million per quarter statewide, although counties expected to lose twice that.

In Franklin County alone, Job and Family Services Director Joy Bivens estimated an annual loss of $1.6 to $1.9 million in state matching funds, but because that aid draws additional federal dollars, the county stood to lose $6.5 million.

With counties operating on calendar-year budgets, DeWine’s directors of Medicaid and Job and Family Services rightfully announced Friday they will continue current funding to counties through 2019 while pledging to work on a long-term resolution in the next state budget.

But if a new administration can figure it out so quickly, couldn’t a two-term team have avoided this mess entirely with appropriate communications? It makes one wonder who are the rookies here.