April 25, 2024

Good afternoon,

This afternoon OASAS leads hosted a SFY25 Budget Briefing for advocates that represent provider and care recipient associations/coalitions.  We took screen shots of all of the slides used during the presentation.  You will find them here:  https://nyscouncil.org/oasas-budget-briefing/

There wasn’t a lot of new information beyond what we have already shared regarding the now enacted OASAS agency budget other than that the state had already issued a (required) Federal Public Notice informing the public that it intended to implement a COLA.  Since the total amount of the COLA and the terms under which it will be disbursed changed since the first Notice, OASAS now needs to go back and issue an update to the Notice that clarifies that 1.5% is flexible while 1.7% is restricted to (generally speaking) CFR codes in the 100s – 700 level but that the final budget does exclude certain C-suite level staff as well as several additional codes above 700.

Also, there is a slide (below) re: OASAS Aid to Localities budget actions that includes a cut (-$11.6M) related to outpatient day rehabilitation, job placement and vocational rehab services.  The next item on the bulleted list describes an increase to these same programs under ‘Legislative Adds’.  There was discussion during the call about this item with advocates weighing in regarding the importance of both programs and in particular the job placement and vocational program.  It is unclear what will happen in this situation given there is a discrepancy of (-$3.6M) that is not rectified by the amount in the ‘legislative additions’ bullet.  We will have more about this shortly.

As always, if you have questions please reach out to me at your convenience at 518 461-8200 or lauri@nyscouncil.org