Connecticut’s non-profit community providers play a vital role in protecting our state’s most vulnerable citizens, including children, seniors, and others who suffer from an excruciating array of difficulties including developmental disabilities, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic abuse and much more. The services these organizations provide are relied upon by thousands of Connecticut residents to make their often unimaginably difficult lives a little less difficult. That these providers also save Connecticut taxpayers money is an added benefit.
Approximately 300 such organizations serving approximately 500,000 people throughout the state currently receive state funding to supplement their efforts. However, a number of factors now threaten to eradicate this vital safety net for Connecticut’s most needy. Some of the problems are new, but most are the same issues Connecticut has been wrestling with for literally decades.
I know something about this problem because as the Mayor of Stamford I’ve seen first-hand the mounting challenges that our city’s local non-profits have faced. In Stamford we’ve done everything possible to help them bridge the gap, including assuring in each city budget that their funding is raised commensurate with the increase of spending in all other city departments (a promise that is unfortunately not matched on the state level).
It’s time to stop the cycle of fighting the same battles over and over. Connecticut needs to begin putting the pieces in place that will secure the future of these non-profits for years to come. This plan is intended as a first-step in that direction.
Over the past generation, the State has lobbed more and more of its obligations onto the backs of non-profit providers, while consistently underfunding them. Any increases they have received in funding during the last decade have been below the inflation rate and far below the increases in health insurance and energy costs. This unfortunate trend has only been exacerbated by the country’s severe economic downturn in recent years.
Additionally, the State is frequently late in delivering the checks, causing a variety of budgetary planning problems for already overburdened providers as they are forced to borrow money, lay off employees, or cut back on the services they provide. As usual, the ones most harmed by any of these outcomes are the Connecticut residents that rely on these services.
Recently, Governor Rell announced that she is diverting some federal stimulus funding to a few community non-profits. While that’s nice, it doesn’t begin to make up for the cuts in funding her administration has made and continues to make in this critical area. And, a one-time influx of stimulus money does nothing in the larger, long-term fight to make Connecticut’s non-profit safety net sustainable. In fact, it just means we’ll be having this conversation again next year.
The bottom line is that increasing demands for these services combined with constant cuts in funding is making it nearly impossible for Connecticut’s non-profits to continue operating, and our state has no long term plan to address this critical problem.
Given the current crisis facing community non-profits, the state should undertake the following three reforms to begin to put Connecticut on a path toward a more sustainable community non-profit provider network:
1) Establish a Community Non-Profit Human Services Cabinet, and create a new, Commissioner-level position to head that cabinet.
a. In 2008 the “Non-profit Human Services Cabinet Bill” (2008, SB 678) passed both the House and Senate with unanimous support before being vetoed by Gov. Rell. That means every Democrat and every Republican thought it was a good idea. Gov. Rell apparently knew better. The bill would have established a Health and Human Services Cabinet to help ensure funding for community non-profits (among other critical responsibilities). Every year, non-profit community providers are forced to waste valuable time and resources waiting and planning to see what their cost of living increases will be for the next fiscal year. As usual, the ones who lose out most are the constituents waiting on services. Curiously, the Governor’s veto message ignored the intent of the bill, instead focusing on the idea that this new cabinet would “interfere in the powers of the legislative and executive branches,” even though the cabinet would be placed in the Office of Policy and Management and the bill was passed with unanimous support in the Legislature. In short, this legislation should be taken up and passed again to create this much-needed cabinet.
b. In addition and in support of the measures laid out in SB 678, the state should elevate a single individual whose purview and responsibility would be to serve as a representative and voice for non-profits in Connecticut’s executive branch.. This individual would function at the same level as commissioner of a state agency, and would serve as head of the Community Non-Profit Human Services Cabinet.
2) Reform the procedures Connecticut uses to reimburse and fund non-profit community providers. In a recent survey of its more than 500 membership organizations, the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits reported that a majority of non-profit providers are now forced to borrow money to pay for basic operating costs and employee salaries, in the process incurring unnecessary interest costs. The same survey showed that because of delayed state funding, many providers have reduced their number of employees and cut back on benefits for the employees they are able to keep. There is simply no excuse for the State to continually delay payments to these providers.
3) Move non-profit providers to the top of the list of recipients for funding from the federal stimulus. Currently, the federal government has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to Connecticut to benefit areas such as energy, the environment, and housing. The state should take money already set aside for services within those broad areas and simply move community non-profit organizations to top of the list to receive the benefit of those services. For example, Connecticut will receive more than $64 million for weatherization efforts. By weatherizing the facilities that house community non-profit providers, the state will not only make up for some of the sever defunding in recent state budgets, but it will also be using a one-time funding increase in a smart way that saves providers money for years to come by lowering utility and upkeep costs.
Given the state of the economy, and the fact that we’re all being forced to do more with less, it’s clear that Connecticut cannot simply hand non-profit providers the kind of increases in funding they need to stabilize their operations. However, even if the state could do that, a one-time injection of funds would do nothing to address the broken system that we’ve been living under for decades. Too often state leaders have chosen quick, politically-convenient fixes over tougher, long-term reform. It’s why we keep having the same discussions about how to fix the same issues.
The only answer for this crisis is for Connecticut to begin to implement smarter, more sustainable reforms. The ideas laid out in this plan are not meant to be exhaustive – implementing them won’t cure everything that ails our non-profits overnight. But they’re a start.
In the end, here’s why this is important: it says something about who we are as a people, and what kind of government we want. There are certain basic functions government must perform, or the norms of society begin to break down. When we turn our backs on the people who most need our help – whose lives may depend on it – we’ve come dangerously close to that breakdown. These people don’t represent a powerful special interest; they represent the neediest in our society. It’s government’s job to make sure they’re looked after, since no one else will.
That’s what these community non-profits do: they help. It’s past time that we, as a state, started helping those who help others.
DAN MALLOY FOR GOVERNOR OF CONNECTICUT
