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A sprawling budget bill covering programs that aid the most vulnerable Minnesotans is now ready for consideration in a special session that the Legislature will need to finish before July to avoid disruptions.

The 303-page bill, which helps fund services for foster care, disabled Minnesotans and older adults, is the result of guidance to cut $1.1 billion from the budget over the next four years.

Two of the areas where the bill cuts, or as some legislators say “slows growth,” are in nursing home funding and waivers for disabled Minnesotans.

"We spent a few days working on that, and at the end, we decided to limit the rate of growth in both the waivers and the nursing homes,” said Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka. He said it accomplishes it by capping it growth at four percent using a specific measure of inflation. 

“That generated about $800 or $900 million to do our work,” Abeler added.

He said making those cuts is painful, and not something he or other legislators wanted to do.

“I felt a duty to work in this area with my experience and make it the best it could be,” he said. 

Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, said the committee was given a tough task.

“We didn’t get the target that we think human services needed and deserved, especially in terms of helping our most vulnerable people, but we worked with what we got,” he said.

Operators of nursing homes and advocates for disabled people aren’t happy to face cuts.

The nursing home industry has faced years of financial difficulty, with many rural homes closing over the last several years.

Kari Thurlow is the president and CEO of LeadingAge Minnesota, an organization that represents the nursing home industry.

“The only way I can characterize our feelings about the health and human services budget bill is one of deep disappointment,” she said. “I think it’s fair to say that some of the cuts that have come forward in this health and human services budget are deeply concerning and potentially devastating.”

Thurlow said that because nursing homes are not reimbursed for costs until sometimes 21 months later. She said the cap of four percent on reimbursement will not cover the high inflation that homes incurred in the last year and a half.

One of the other areas of concern was an earlier proposal to pass on some costs for human services to counties. Counties spent a lot of time at the Capitol during the session lobbying against those changes, saying it would result in property tax hikes by up to 10 percent.

Most of those shifts were avoided, lawmakers said.

Matt Freeman, executive director of the Minnesota Association of County Social Service Administrators, said his organization is still working through the math to be sure.

“We’re still combing through the final language as it’s been posted, and we see that it still has several of the smaller cost shifts and cuts to counties that have some concerns for our budget,” he said. “[We] appreciate that the larger cost shifts, which would have been catastrophic for county budgets and really negative impacts on the people we serve and on county property tax levies — that we’ve avoided the large majority of those cuts.”

But there are still concerns. Notably from county sheriffs, who say the bill should do more to address mental health needs. They say the state lacks beds for people that need mental health holds in facilities focused on helping those people. Instead they say those people are ending up in county jails because of a lack of available beds.

“We’re calling for an investment in Minnesota’s state operated mental health system, particularly to expand treatment capacity for individuals who are civilly committed and currently stuck in county jails across the state,” said Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable. “These individuals need treatment, not incarceration. They’re patients, not criminals. They need hospitals, not jails. Because of the lack of capacity in Minnesota’s mental health treatment facilities, we are criminalizing mental illness, and it must stop.”

MPR News politics reporter Clay Masters contributed to this report.

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The health and human services budget bill is one of the major items to be considered in an upcoming special session. Votes are expected later this month.

Politicians discuss a bill during a meeting

Budget bill slims future funding for nursing homes, disability services waivers

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