Well, readers, it’s that frenetic time of year for people who follow the creation of the state budget. With a technical deadline of April 1, the budget takes up all the oxygen in Albany. The budget hearings, joint meetings of Assembly and Senate committees to discuss budget items and testimony, are available on the New York State Assembly’s website. If you care about aging and aging services, the Human Services and Health hearings are the most relevant.
Budget investment to meet the needs of older adults typically fails to keep pace with the demand for services and the growth of the older adult population. Governor Hochul’s executive budget included $45M to meet the needs of people on waiting lists for services, including a continuation of $10M that we received from the Legislature last year. We commend the Governor for including this highest single addition to the aging services budget in history. At the same time, it isn’t enough. We cannot allow older adults to suffer waiting for a hot, home-delivered meal or assistance with personal care. Waiting lists do not fully capture current unmet need as some area agencies on aging cannot maintain waiting lists, and often individuals decline to be put on a waitlist or are diverted to other resources, if possible. That is why we are asking for at least $45 million to end service waitlists, and $44 million to cover the costs of inflation in services and cost-of-living adjustments for aging services staff. The rising cost of food, for instance, significantly impacts home-delivered and congregate meals. Flat-funding aging services would simply result in a cut because the same amount of funding serves fewer people.
And critical aging services do not stop there. We support several other investments such as $875,000 to fund elder abuse and scam prevention programming. Elder abuse services, such as emergency multidisciplinary teams (E-MDTs), step in when abuse is suspected or discovered so individuals are adequately supported, such as arranging homecare when a primary caregiver is the abuser. Scams are pervasive and sophisticated and often target older adults. We also support a $12.3 million increase to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman (LTCOP), which has been severely underfunded and reliant on volunteers.
In previous budget years, we’ve pointed out that aging services have constituted less than 8/10 of 1% or <.08% of the state budget. Based on the executive budget proposal, it stands to fall to much less than that.
This year, the Association on Aging in New York is making a unified budget ask alongside LiveOn NY, Lifespan of Greater Rochester, AARP, and Statewide Senior Action Council. You can view all of the budget priorities by visiting and downloading “FY26 Budget Priorities” via LiveOn NY’s website. Representatives of each organization gave testimony at the Human Services budget hearing.
We’ll close this column with two final thoughts. First, what is happening with the Master Plan for Aging (MPA)? We’d like to know, too. Several weeks ago, we learned that the draft final version of the Master Plan was shared with agency leadership. At the Public Health and Health Planning Council, the Department of Health announced that the Plan would be made public likely by the end of February. However, when asked about the MPA, Commissioner McDonald reported that the Plan would likely become public in 6-7 weeks. Furthermore, when asked why MPA recommendations were not included in the Governor’s budget, the Commissioner responded that the Plan was “not designed to do that” and it’s a plan that the Legislature will see and respond to, including deciding what to fund and how to fund it.
Secondly, how do we feel about the changes to the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP)? Over 1,000 people receive consumer-directed homecare through aging services, and many older adults receive Medicaid-funded CDPAP, and both groups stand to be negatively impacted by problems in the rollout and timeline for a single fiscal intermediary in Medicaid CDPAP. We are following this issue closely.
See you next month!
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.