Disabilities agency facing almost $40M deficiency as lawmakers tie up budget

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ANNAPOLIS — Maryland lawmakers are planning during conference committee budget negotiations Friday to plug a nearly $40 million funding deficiency for the Developmental Disabilities Administration for the current fiscal year.

The announcement of the deficiency comes as members of the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate have labored over how much money they can cut from the DDA, which connects people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to services, in the fiscal year 2027 budget.

“We will fill that,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Ben Barnes, D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s, said after his chamber passed the budget Thursday morning. “You will see that come down in conference committee and through the supplemental. There’ll be money coming down to fill in another almost $40 million deficiency of DDA.”

Budget deficiencies occur when spending goes over what was allocated. 

This isn’t the first fiscal hole the legislature has had to plug for the DDA in recent history — last year, the agency was underfunded by nearly $400 million.

Asked why the DDA is consistently spending more than it is appropriated, Barnes said it isn’t his “job to defend the department; that’s the administration’s job.”

“But we see what you see, which is why we are putting $8 million” in a supplemental budget “into independent audits of DDA so we can get our arms around this,” he said.

House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk said she, Senate President Bill Ferguson and Gov. Wes Moore, all Democrats, decided that this session was the time to peel back the curtain on practices in the beleaguered agency rather than waiting until 2027 because “we know we have to face it, anyway.”

“My hope is that that study … will help us, because we cannot fine ourselves every year,” said Peña-Melnyk, D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s. “It’s a program that has grown from one-point-something-billion to over $3 billion in five years.”

At the legislative session’s start, Moore introduced a budget that would have shaved $150 million in funding for the DDA. The Senate amended the governor’s proposal to reduce the cut to approximately $127 million.

The House largely maintained the DDA cuts to the chagrin of members on both sides of the aisle.

Del. Lauren Arikan, R-Harford, offered an amendment to the budget before it passed on the House floor Thursday, making a heartfelt plea to restore funding to the agency.

“…[T]his budget, very sadly, has a massive, massive cut for the folks in our state who can very much least afford it, and who are really the only people that, I think, we should all agree are the folks who the government” should be helping, she said.

Arikan said that her vote history doesn’t depict her as “a big spender,” but she sees the DDA as “a worthy thing” to fund.

Del. Emily Shetty, D-Montgomery, said that although she also doesn’t want any of the 19,000 families in Maryland that currently have access to DDA services to lose any of their supports, there are structural issues in maintaining it at all because of a federal funding mechanism.

“…[T]he federal government gives us special permission to run this program, so long as we are able to do it at a lower cost than institutionalization for one year,” she said.

According to Shetty, the average cost of one year of institutionalization is currently $217,000.

“Over time, that average has gone up significantly,” she said. “So much so that we are 18% — 18% of our budget — away from losing federal support entirely.”

Although Arikan admitted she doesn’t identify as “a big spender,” Barnes said he is.

“I like the fact that money is getting on the ground to people who need it. I like it in this arena; I like it in several arenas throughout the state … but the cost neutrality provision is — we are up against it,” said Barnes. “We lose $1.7 billion if it grows by a mere 18%. That would be tragic; that would be heartbreaking; that would be unsustainable; that is something, as people who have to do the work of governing, we can’t let happen.”

Arikan’s amendment failed on a vote of 23-97.

Del. Aaron Kaufman, D-Montgomery, has cerebral palsy. He said on the floor that voting in opposition to the amendment was the “toughest vote that I’ve ever passed in my four years here.”

“I’m voting against this amendment because if we lose our waiver, people like me are going back into institutions because what people don’t understand is institutionalized care is mandatory in Medicaid,” Kaufman said. “The fact is that we’re ensuring pain today so the DDA and community living exists tomorrow.”

Beyond attempting to restore funding to the DDA, Democrats in the House slapped down several other Republican amendments to the budget and its companion bill across floor sessions Wednesday and Thursday, including a measure to implement a 30-day gas tax holiday.

Members of the House Appropriations and Senate Budget and Taxation committees are set to convene a conference committee Friday to iron out what Barnes called “minor” differences in what each chamber passed.

“There are differences,” he said. “We’re always going to have some differences, but it’s more a traditional budget year like you’ve seen in years old, where we’re not going to have a big disagreement on any major item.”

This story has been updated.