| |
LEGISLATIVE DAY 2006 - ANOTHER HUGE SUCCESS
Thank you to the 350 participants who came to Albany yesterday for
Legislative Day 2006 – it was a resounding success! After hearing
welcoming remarks from Senator Thomas Morahan, Chair of the
Senate’s
Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities and
Assemblyman Peter Rivera, Chairman of the Assembly Committee on
Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Developmental Disabilities,
our “teams” - people with disabilities, direct support
professionals, family members and agency administrators then
prepared for meetings with their respective legislators in the
State Capitol and Legislative Office Building.
Legislative Day is one of NYSACRA’s most important yearly events,
as we get together in grassroots advocacy to educate our elected
officials on issues pertaining to our industry. This year, we
highlighted the ongoing crisis in recruiting and retaining
quality, well-trained direct support professionals and the
critical need to develop a career ladder that will attract and
keep them. To support this theme, we introduced NYSACRA’s newest
publication, the Workforce Handbook, an eight-page handbook
with statistics, trends and facts about the direct support
professional that our teams later delivered to their legislators.
We also heard from two direct support professionals participating
in NYSACRA’s Disability Studies Certificate, Jason Robert,
Anderson School and Megan Shaver, People Inc.
We
have been fortunate to get “two-tiered” trends in most of our
OMRDD Medicaid programs over the last few years. This year’s
proposed budget includes a 2.5% COLA for non-trended programs.
However, these increases are diminished by sharp increases in
energy cost and health care cost. Legislators were very receptive
to our concerns on this issue. Problems with Medicare D were also
a topic of interest with most of the people we met with.
And
speaking of grassroots advocacy, the highlight of our day was
recognizing Henrietta Messier for her 50 years of extraordinary
grassroots advocacy on behalf of her daughter, Cherie, and all
people with developmental disabilities, with NYSACRA’s Excellence
Award. After receiving the award, New York State Senator Neil
Breslin read from his formal Proclamation that was introduced in
the Senate. Assemblyman Ronald Canestrari also introduced a
similar proclamation for Henrietta in the Assembly. As noted that
morning, Henrietta is a Treasure and a fine grassroots Advocate.
It was a great turnout for a very important event. We encourage
you to visit your legislators in their district offices and invite
them to your programs so they become more informed of the issues.
This is only the beginning of the state budget process. NYSACRA
will continue to inform, update, and educate legislators on our
issues until final budget is passed. You will be receiving
materials from the Legislative packet in the mail soon or they can
be found on the NYSACRA website, or in the links below:
NYSACRA Issues 2006
Press Release for Agency Use
Talking Point
2006
Energy-Fuel Cost Analysis
|
