Hearings of Several Kinds – January 7th

January 03, 2026

The public hearings on the Governor’s Budget are scheduled for Wednesday (January 7th) the Notice is linked HERE with all of the details!  Please pay attention to the instructions about registering to speak and most important the polite request to limit your remarks to 3 minutes or less!  If you wish to advance the goals of VNPP our Legislative Plan will be of assistance, but it is more important for you to speak for yourself!  

The tricky bit this year (on the DD side of the house) will be about DD Waiver Rates and is as follows:  

• While we can all agree that the rates fall short of what is needed to be able to recruit and retain qualified staff, the mandate in the “Permanent Injunction” negotiated with DOJ last year was to have a rate study completed on a very specific group of services; during the Session in 2025, the General Assembly insisted that DMAS focus on ONLY the specified services.   Guidehouse, the contractor, did as requested and produced recommended rate increases for 20 services including (among others) Community Engagement, Community Coaching, Personal Assistance, Respite, Companion, Independent Living and the full range of Therapeutic Consult and Nursing Services and, as appropriate, the related CD Services.  
• When the cost proposal was developed the obvious sticking points were the services highlighted above, which are also widely used in the CCC+ Waiver.   In order to limit the cost (in a year when we anticipate a very tight budget), the Governor chose to request the rate increase for only those services included by DOJ for the rate study that are exclusive to the DD Waiver;  that reduced the “ask” in the Governor’s budget to ~$28M in FY27 and ~$31M in FY28 (GF),  the “full ask” would have been $499.3M in FY27 and $1.18B  in FY28 (GF).  
• Prior to the release of the Budget, VNPP had made the decision to ask for a 3% increase for July 1st and an additional 4.6% on January 1st (to accommodate the expected minimum wage increase) for the services NOT included in the Guidehouse Study including Group Day, Group Home Residential, Sponsored Residential Supported Employment. Supported Living, Transition Services and Peer Mentoring.  Knowing that there would be active and considerable advocacy for the services such as personal care and nursing, the Board decided to stick with our original plan and represent those services/providers excluded entirely from other’s consideration.

We are certain that this will be well discussed at the Budget hearings!  And, just to add to the debate . . . the Court has called for a hearing on the same day at 11:30am to discuss the “issues” with the Governor’s Budget and advocating for the funding for personal care and other services highlighted above.   The risk, of course, is that absent a good answer, the default will be no answer at all!


And on the BH side of the House – we have two targeted asks:

• Delay the implementation of the Redesign with new services available January 1, 2027 and legacy services phased out July 1, 2027.  By imposing the condition that no individual can simultaneously get both services, the plan will be “budget neutral!”  and far more manageable!  
• Retain Community Crisis Stabilization as a service – see the argument here!

 
The members do respond to issues when they know there is interest and dynamic engagement from their constituents – so register to speak and make your point(s) briefly and be sure to articulate clearly the what, the why and the service you are most concerned about!