Utah House Democrats

Potential state cuts may hit human services, highways

State budget » Departments say 5 percent reduction could cost 1,200 jobs

From the Salt Lake Tribune
by Robert Gehrke

While economists predict Utah’s economy is on the rebound, legislators this week will begin the painful process of cutting nearly $400 million more from a state budget that has already been slashed by $1 billion.

With the easy cuts already made, agencies and some legislative leaders fear the fat is gone and the new round will be cutting into muscle and bone.

Lawmakers need to cut $174 million to cover red ink in the current year’s budget, plus another $218 million in the coming budget.

While the process is just beginning, state departments provided Gov. Gary Herbert with a snapshot of what a potential 5 percent reduction would mean. Some of the cuts could be severe.

Nearly 1,200 jobs could be eliminated, child protection investigations could be scaled back, treatment at the state mental hospital could be reduced, highway patrol trooper positions could be cut and aid for Utah’s poor and elderly could be chopped.

Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the targeted budget cuts are really starting points.

“Our process is to look at reductions first and then we’ll come back and if they’re totally not acceptable, we’ll have to look at some other alternatives,” Hillyard said.

Lawmakers still have about more than $400 million in Rainy Day Funds and another $100 million in money set aside to fund education programs. Several tax hikes have also been proposed, but none of them appear to be gaining widespread traction.

Any of those funds could be tapped to cover budgetary hot spots. But Hillyard said there is some concern that the economy will be slow to recover and lawmakers don’t want to spend too much of their reserves too soon.

When legislators gather Tuesday for pre-session meetings, they will most likely start with balancing the current-year budget, helped by immediate reductions Herbert ordered last month, including a travel freeze and a 3 percent cut to departments.

Then they will move to the 5 percent cuts for the coming year. Hillyard said they set that target, in part, because departments had already put the numbers together for the governor, but legislators will have their own figures, as well.

The list compiled by the Governor’s Office details cuts to every department in state government. It does not include reductions that would be required from school districts.

Liquor stores would have to cut staff and reduce the number of hours they would operate. As a result, the revenue from state liquor sales would also decline.

In the Department of Human Services, cuts would target screening to ensure those working with children, the elderly or impaired adults don’t have a record of misconduct. Psychiatric services at the state hospital would be cut and 35 jobs eliminated; aid to foster children and their adopted families would be reduced and 50 jobs done away with; and investigations of deaths of individuals in state care would be scaled back.

“We did all of our administrative cuts already and we’re to the point where it’s difficult to say that any further cuts aren’t going to impact services,” said department spokeswoman Liz Solis.

A state-run health plan created to provide primary-care medical coverage to low-income residents who don’t qualify for Medicaid would not take any new participants, hospitals and doctors would receive even less to care for Medicaid patients, and coverage for pregnant women and breast and cervical cancer patients could be eliminated.

Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland, co-chairman of the health and human services budget committee, said it is not uncommon for agencies to try to game the budget process.

“Unfortunately, too often in the political process people put some of the most egregious examples out there — cut this or cut that — more to stir up media attention than to have any realistic proposal,” he said.

He said he plans to spend Tuesday listening to all of the interested parties, but believes that there are still some easy cuts that could improve productivity without harming programs that can actually prove they are working.

The cuts would cost the prison system a parole violator center, intended to detain parole violators in order to keep them from occupying scarce prison beds. The reduction could also cost the system 432 prison beds.

However, department heads suggested that the violator center could be built if funds paid by inmates for DNA processing could be used and the prison beds could be preserved through a 44-hour staff furlough.

“These proposals show the potential consequences, but also alternatives that would help us with our number one priority of maintaining public safety and minimizing impact on the staff,” said spokesman Steve Gehrke.

The court system projects it could lose up to 100 full-time employees. “For us it’s going to involve personnel,” court administrator Dan Becker said of the impending budget cuts. “There’s just no escaping that.”

The Commerce Department would do away with a property rights ombudsman created to handle citizen-government land disputes and would not fill three positions planned to check the citizenship status of real estate and other professional licensees.

Sheena McFarland contributed to this report.
Legislative budget meetings

The annual legislative session begins Jan. 25. Preliminary appropriations subcommittees will meet Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the state Capitol

More information is available at http://www.le.state.ut.us/asp/interim/cal.asp

http://www.sltrib.com/utahpolitics/ci_14154841