The Legislative Session is Over:

No significant new damage to the Safety Net

The Legislature finished its work this morning. The most damaging proposals to low income Minnesotans did not succeed. Whether the state has solved the problem created by the line item veto of General Assistance Medical Care last year is still an unanswered question.

Thank you – to the members of Affirmative Options and our friends and allies in the Stand Together Minnesota campaign: your willingness to engage made all the difference in an extraordinarily tough budget environment.

The budget the Legislature negotiated with the Governor includes:

• No cuts to General Assistance – despite the Governor’s proposal to eliminate the assistance altogether;
• One cut to the Minnesota Family Investment Program – reducing a $50 a month bonus to $25 a month for families leaving assistance with a job;
• Funding for Emergency General Assistance was restored for 2011, but the Governor’s unallotment of that program for 2010 still stands.
• No cuts to the on-going funding for the funds that help low-wage working families pay for child care;
• An end to counting assets in determining whether a household is eligible for Food Stamps. To be eligible a household has to show income of less than 165% of the poverty line.

The Governor had proposed eliminating MFIP assistance to families with disabled parents and children. That did not occur. The budget proposals from the House of Representatives would have cut deeply into funding for creating short-term skill-building jobs, cutting assistance to families on MFIP who live in subsidized housing, to cut assistance to families leaving MFIP with a job and to cut funding for the services families on MFIP receive – and none of those occurred.

Will childless adults in Minnesota who are living on very low incomes have health care coverage? There is a temporary solution that patches together a bare bones version of General Assistance Medical Assistance. Only four hospitals have entered into contracts with the state to create coordinated care organizations to provide coverage to people eligible for GAMC. Those four hospitals are all in Hennepin and Ramsey County and their contracts allow them to limit the number of people they serve. So most of the state and most of the people relying on GAMC are covered in this compromise. The legislature did make some more money available for non-metro area hospitals to reimburse them for patients who come through their doors. The next Governor has until Jan. 15th to decide whether to transfer adults from GAMC and MinnesotaCare to Medical Assistance. The transfer would earn Minnesota more than $1 billion in federal money, would cover everyone currently covered and would cover the whole state.

As of right now, we have not heard whether the Governor signed the Ladders Out of Poverty bill. The bill would create a working group of legislators to develop proposals on how to help low income Minnesotans to accumulate and secure assets.

Again, thanks to you: You, our friends and allies got the message through that cash assistance accounts for only one half of 1% of state general fund spending. We also were able to educate policy makers that MFIP and General Assistance are bare-bones alternatives to unemployment insurance, paid sick leave and short or long-term disability insurance for low wage workers.