Pa. House Majority Whip Bryan Cutler talks budget with Lebanon nonprofits

(Lebanon) — Two of Lebanon’s busiest nonprofit health care and counseling agencies are starting to feel the pinch of Pennsylvania’s budget impasse.

Lebanon Family Health Services and the Sexual Assault Resource and Counseling Center both rely on federal and state funding to provide services to thousands of clients. Without a state budget to pass those funds on, they are facing decisions about cutting services, laying off employees and adding debt by borrowing money to pay the bills.

On Monday the agencies’ top administrators — Kim Kreider-Umble for LFHS and Jenny Murphy-Shifflet for SARCC — had the opportunity to let a member of the Republican state government leadership know exactly the challenges they are dealing with, when state House Majority Whip Bryan Cutler (R-100), accompanied by Rep. Russ Diamond (R-102), made a visit to the groups’ shared Lebanon offices at 615 Cumberland St.

Kreider-Umble is president and CEO of LFHS, where she’s weathered previous budget impasses during her 27-year career. Federal dollars mean keeping clients healthy, so she did not mince words when addressing Cutler.

“Make sure you keep the federal dollars flowing that come through the state,” she said. “For us that would mean the Women Infants and Children Program. That’s a federal program administered by state, and if you add that into our state money, it’s about 55 percent of our budget. And our budget is $1.6 million.”

Murphy-Shifflet is president and CEO of SARCC, where her tenure is equal to Kreider-Umble’s. She echoed her counterpart’s remarks, stating 38 percent of the agency’s budget comes from the state, with the remainder coming from federal and other sources. Administrators at SARCC, which also serves Berks and Schuylkill counties, are making contingency plans if the budget impasse continues, she told Cutler.

“We have been watching the budget closely,” Murphy-Shifflet said via speakerphone. “We’ve been very proactive. Our board of directors just approved doubling our line of credit. We also will be coming back together as a group in September, if there is not a budget approved at that point, and we will be looking at shutting our doors down one or two days a week and laying off staff.”

Those decisions will involve prioritizing programs, Murphy-Shifflet said.

“We are going to have to cut back and identify critical services,” she explained. “And critical services would be counseling and going to the hospital with a client, and trying to balance out what we can do with the staff we currently have.”

LFHS is also arranging a line of credit to maintain its level of service, which includes reproductive care, pre-natal care and a host of other health-related programs. Kreider-Umble pledged to keep the office open.

“Because of the nature of the services we are providing as well, reproductive health services, administering the Women Infants and Children Program, we are going to do everything in our power to keep providing the services at the level we are providing them now. Just because that is our commitment to the patients and the clients we are serving,” she said.

Cutler’s 100th Legislative District represents neighboring southern Lancaster County, but he is no stranger to Lebanon County, having graduated from Lebanon Valley College in 2001.

As a former medical X-ray technician who also holds a degree from Widener Law School, where he specialized in health care law, he listened attentively as Kreider-Umble and Murphy-Shifflet explained the challenges they will face operating without funding.

Cutler put the blame for the agencies’ trouble squarely at Gov. Tom Wolf’s doorstep, for his vetoing the entire, Republican-supported $30.1 billion spending plan instead of using a line-item veto that could have kept the agencies funded while the rest of the budget was negotiated.

“It did not need to devolve to this level where everything was unfunded,” Cutler said. “There were 274 of the 401 lines that were agreed to or funded higher. Your (SARCC and LFHS) lines were actually both. They were 10 percent higher than last year and exactly what the governor asked for, yet it was caught up in the veto, unfortunately, which has a very real impact on your services and your employees.”

Wolf views the matter differently.

When reached for comment a spokesman for the governor said the Republican’s budget was filled with too many faults to use a line item veto.

“If Gov. Wolf had accepted the Republican budget supported by Rep. Cutler, the entire commonwealth would be worse off,” press secretary Jeff Sheridan said in an emailed reply. “Human services agencies would be worse off because the Republican budget continued to underfund them, our children would be worse off because the Republicans did not provide adequate education funding, middle-class families and seniors would be worse off because the Republicans did not include property tax relief, and the commonwealth’s credit rating would be worse off because the Republican budget does not fix the deficit — in fact, it adds to the deficit.”

Sheridan said the governor will continue to push for fiscal solutions in a budget that would increase education funding through a Marcellus Shale severance tax and property tax relief.

“Republican leaders have given us multi-billion dollar deficits, struggling schools, and rising property taxes,” he said. “It is time for Republican leaders like Rep. Cutler to stop ignoring math and to stop pretending that their same gimmicks, irresponsibility, and deficits will help move the commonwealth forward.”

As a GOP leader, Cutler was in the room with Wolf and his aides last week when both sides met to negotiate for the first time since the budget impasse began on July 1.

While encouraged by the progress made at that meeting, he insisted that the governor will have to compromise to get a budget passed.

“The political, ‘small p,’ issue is we have to get the votes, whatever the compromise is,” he said. “That’s something, unfortunately, I think the governor is out ahead of his own party and his caucus members more then he realizes at this point. So we are trying to take a look at that.

“We have to balance the budget, which is why we passed the budget we did,” Cutler continued. “But we preserved those line items, like domestic violence and rape crisis, with the 10 percent increase that the governor asked for. We tried to get as much as we could and fund those line items that are priorities. But we have to work with the constraints of a balanced budget, and that is really the piece we are wrestling with now.”

---

This article comes to us through a partnership between Lebanon Daily News and WITF.