Empire Justice Organizational Priorities

December 1, 2007

Author: Kristin Brown Lilley

Each year, Empire Justice develops a proactive legislative agenda that reflects our organizational goal of making the law work for all New Yorkers.  This year, our agenda focuses on three broad areas – access to legal and other critical human services, strengthening public benefits and public health programs and assisting New Yorkers facing financial crises.  All three areas are tied to the need to recognize and support the substantial number of New Yorkers living at or below the federal poverty level and the many more individuals and families that hover at the brink of financial insolvency as a result of falling victim to predatory lending practices.

The recent release of poverty data from the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau highlights the need for the State to focus on efforts that will help low income New Yorkers and their children step over the poverty line and into the middle class.  Indeed, our state maintains the widest gap between rich and poor in our nation; we have the distinction of holding the highest poverty rate of all the northeastern and Midwestern states; and in four of our upstate cities, more than 40% of children live in poverty. 

Despite the limitations presented by the State’s current budget gap, we believe that our state can and must do more to assist our lower income and disadvantaged New Yorkers.  However, in recognition of the difficult funding decisions that must be made in the coming budget cycle, in addition to the policy priorities we have identified and recommend implementing as matter of fairness and justice, Empire Justice has also identified a number of policy solutions that can save the state and local governments money through drawing down additional federal resources and increasing efficiencies in public benefit programs.  Our recommendations for action are outlined below.

Access to Legal and other Human Services

• Continue to Invest in Access to Justice – maintain and increase last year’s historic new investment in state funding for civil legal services by providing a total of $25 million to be administered by a new Office for Civil Justice in the Executive.
• Save the state money by bringing more federal dollars to New York – invest $10.74 million in the Disability Advocacy Program to help more low income disabled individuals obtain federally funded SSI/SSD benefits.
• Ensure low income families can afford quality child care – cap child care subsidy co-payments at 10% of household income and make eligibility requirements uniform across the state.
• Increase federal resources to support work supports and services for individuals eligible for public assistance – commit to phasing out use of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Family (TANF) block grant to fund the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit.
• Ensure that all victims of domestic violence have fair access to Family Court and certain criminal protection by expanding the Family Court Act and Criminal Procedure Law definitions of "family and household member" to include individuals in dating and intimate relationships, as well as caregivers.  

Strengthening Public Benefits and Public Health Programs

• Streamline and simplify all programs (Medicaid, Food Stamps, Public Assistance and Child Care) with a goal of improving the lives of public benefits recipients; cut administrative costs for government agencies; ensure continuity of coverage and seamless transition between programs; reduce churning & eliminate unnecessary documentation requirements;  and maximize federal contributions to New York by ensuring that applicants eligible for programs with federal funding enroll and stay enrolled. (Please see “Streamlining Agenda” article for specific details)
• Provide welfare recipients with the means to meet the basic needs of their household while on assistance – provide a long overdue increase the welfare grant.
• Ensure state and local agencies meet their obligations to ensure individuals with Limited English Proficiency have meaningful access to language services they need to effectively communicate when accessing health care, government services and benefits.
• Stop children from being poisoned by lead in their homes by enacting the primary prevention solutions contained in “The Childhood Lead Poisoning Primary Prevention and Safe Housing Act” A.7533(Peoples)/S.4121(Perkins) and "The Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and Safe Housing Act”A.6399C(Gantt)/S.6350(Robach).
• Minimize medical debt for low-income consumers by encouraging hospitals to create and publicize financial assistance programs—restrict hospital reimbursements from the state’s Indigent Care Poll to services for patients actually enrolled in those financial assistance programs.

Assisting New Yorkers Facing Financial Crisis

• Keep victims of the subprime market in their homes and on the tax rolls – invest in foreclosure prevention measures including $10 million in funding for housing counseling and civil legal services, the creation of a $100 million statewide home rescue fund, and begin collecting and making available to the public statewide foreclosure data.
• Ensure that low income individuals are not placed at financial risk by inappropriately freezing bank accounts containing funds that are exempt from seizure (this includes Social Security, disability benefits, pensions, child support and other essential income) S.6203(Volker)/A.8527(Weinstein)
• Help protect New York consumers from obtaining mortgage loans that put their financial stability at risk - pass the New York State Responsible Lending Act of 2007 and support federal legislative efforts to regulate mortgage lending. A.8972A(Towns)

Streamlining & Simplification Agenda

1. Overarching Goals 

a.  Maximize access to public benefits for low-income New Yorkers by ensuring continuity of coverage and seamless transitions between programs
b.  Maximize the effectiveness of state expenditures on benefit programs by reducing churning & eliminating unnecessary documentation requirements
c.  Maximize federal contributions to New York by ensuring that applicants eligible for programs with federal funding enroll and stay enrolled

Streamlining and Simplification Across Benefit Programs

In order to move toward the goal of seamless transitions between benefit programs we need to:

• Achieve statewide uniformity for administering all benefit programs.
• Simplify and coordinate application processes for individuals eligible for multiple benefits (FS, MA, child care, HEAP, etc.  NOTE: The Working Families Initiative establishes statewide standards for granting waivers of face to face interviewing and finger imaging requirements for working households and seniors applying for food stamps.  We need to make more of these kinds of changes across programs.  

For example, if seniors and disabled New Yorkers were able to apply for Food Stamps and New York’s Medicaid Savings Programs together, we could maximize federal dollars for New York by increasing participation in both the federally funded Food Stamps program and the federally funded Low Income Subsidy available under Medicare Part D, even as we help struggling older and disabled households.

• Implement greater use of technology across all programs.  NOTE:  Not only would greater use of technology streamline administrative processes, it would also help state programs meet requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  

1. Video teleconferencing should be available for home bound individuals, those living in rural areas, and incarcerated individuals.
2. Telephone interviews should also available as an alternative to face-to-face interviews.  NOTE: The Working Families Initiative has put this in place in the food stamp program for working families.
3. Online applications should be offered as an alternative to paper applications.  NOTE: Online applications should become an alternative and not a substitute.  Otherwise we risk constructing a new barrier for seniors, LEP/immigrants, disabled and other people without access to computers.
4. Electronic management of applications and renewals files.  We need to make it possible for applicants and recipients to access information from their file electronically (check on application status, report changes, check benefit balance, locate a phone number to speak to a live person, etc.)  NOTE: Currently applicants can check their PA/FS benefit balance electronically, but not information for other programs.
5. Create common databases to allow for data matching and eliminate  the need for workers to establish financial eligibility more than once for different programs

3. Specific Streamlining Proposals for Specific Benefit Programs

a.  Medicaid

• Eliminate face-to-face requirement
• Require renewals on a biennial basis (every other year) rather than every year.  NOTE:  In order to satisfy federal requirements, year one could be full recertification and year two would involve only a postcard mailing -- “If nothing else in your life has changed, sign here.”
• Consolidate eligibility categories (bring single and childless couples up to a level similar to other medically need individuals)
• Eliminate finger imaging 
• Eliminate the asset test
• Eliminate mid-year reporting requirements made unnecessary by continuous eligibility for adults
• Streamline the application process for New York’s Medicaid Savings Programs (MSPs) by eliminating requirements for interviews and resource documentation.  New York also needs to fix the SSI-related budgeting problem for multi-person households applying for MSPs.
• Eliminate public assistance rules that currently apply to single and childless couples applying for Medicaid, i.e.:
• Drug and alcohol screening and treatment
• Transfer of asset penalty for community Medicaid
• Room and board test in standard-of-need budgeting
• Provide a state portal for enrollment and recertification of MA eligibility.  NOTE:  a state portal could provide the opportunity to pilot some of the suggested streamlining changes.  The pilot could be implemented on a geographic basis or a population basis or for a smaller program (i.e. MSPs initially rather than all of Medicaid)
  

b. Food Stamps

• Streamline application/recertification
• Remove finger imaging
• Improve direct certification for school meals

c. Child Care

• Expand use of simplified child care application
• Standardize child care co-pays and eligibility requirements across the counties
• Eliminate child support requirement

d. Public Assistance

• Eliminate automobile asset limit test.  NOTE:  This would make PA consistent with other benefit programs and avoid discrimination against people with disabilities inherent in the current rule which provides for an increased exemption in value for automobiles used for work