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Officials: County programs at risk due to state cuts

TONY MUSSARE JEFF WHEELAND

Year after year of cuts to county programs, including courts and mental health, make another year of state funding decreases hard for county officials to swallow.

Cuts proposed in Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget, as well as ones in the recently passed House of Representatives’ budget, focus on human services, county courts and mental health services.

Already a “lean” county, when it comes to mental health spending, “Lycoming County does it right,” said Commissioner Tony Mussare.

In Wolf’s budget proposal, mental health services across the state are cut by $19.6 million and the House proposal cuts an additional $5 million.

“That limits what we can do,” said Keith Wagner, administrator of the Lycoming and Clinton counties’ Mental Health Intellectual Disability Program. He added that a cut in funding for one program, especially mental health, will trickle to the rest of the county as well.

“Over the last 10 years or so, there are just things we can no longer offer because the funds aren’t there,” Wagner said.

A reduction in mental health services in the county will cut down on crime prevention measures, increasing the crime rate in the county.

Right now, the proposed decrease is in services that are not mandated by the state, Wagner said, but he added that simply because they are not mandated doesn’t mean the need is not there.

Wagner is looking at specifically reducing services such as personal care homes, a contract for psychologist services and billing for case management services.

“We need to be more creative in what we are doing and understanding what we are doing,” Wagner said.

The budget proposal does not cut funds to child welfare, according to Mark Egly, director of the Lycoming Children and Youth Services. However, he said that if the county is working with children, it often also is providing some type of mental health service to other adult members of the family.

“If it impacts one area of human services, it really impacts all of us,” Egly said. “Any hit for the human services system is really a hit for Lycoming County overall.”

Outcry against the House budget proposal’s numerous cuts has come from the County Commissioner Association of Pennsylvania, which stated that despite the claim of a “no tax increase” budget, funding cuts to local services will require counties to raise taxes.

“It instead represents a continuing pattern of the state failing to meet its full responsibility to its service delivery partners and its citizens most in need,” the association said in a statement.

Line items to be eliminated include:

• Juvenile probation services, $18.9 million;

• Adult probation services, $16.2 million;

• Intermediate punishment treatment programs, $18.2 million;

• County trial reimbursement, $200,000;

• Senior judge reimbursement, $1.4 million; and

• Court interpreter county grants, $1.5 million.

Line items to be decreased include:

• County court reimbursement, by $3.5 million;

• Jurors cost reimbursement, by $168,000;

• Mental health services, by $5 million from the governor’s proposal for a total cut of $19.6 million;

• Behavioral health services, by $4 million;

• Human Services Development Fund, by $2 million; and

• Homeless assistance, by $2.8 million.

State Rep. Jeff Wheeland, R-Loyalsock Township, said that while the cuts are difficult to handle, they are necessary.

“We are reducing everybody’s allowance by a little bit,” Wheeland said. “They’re just going to have to live within that.”

At the moment, Mussare said, the county will be able to live within its means, but if cuts continue to come down from the state, it will be the county taxpayers who bear it.

Despite the cuts, he said that while some counties may need to raise taxes based on the state budget cuts, Lycoming may not be one of them.

“I’m not sure that would be the reason why we would be raising taxes in Lycoming County,” Mussare said.

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