More Pennsylvania counties step up to keep social services afloat during budget impasse

• By Tom Lisi | For LNP/LancasterOnline

Bills from social services providers are starting to pile up on the desks of county officials across the commonwealth, and the state agencies that rely on counties to run those services have stopped paying for them.

That’s life in Pennsylvania, as the state approaches seven weeks without a state budget.

Counties rely on outside organizations to provide a suite of services state and federal laws require. That includes daily care of the chronically ill, residential programs for foster children and physical therapy for toddlers with developmental delays, to name a few.

In the short term, those services across southcentral Pennsylvania will overwhelmingly continue, according to local providers and county officials, but how long counties are willing to pay them varies.

During a prolonged budget impasse in 2015 and 2016, many providers went nine months without getting paid for their services. Some organizations went dark, while others cut or furloughed employees, said Anne Gingrich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations.

Many service providers took extraordinary measures to keep the lights on as long as possible, Gringrich said.

“People care so deeply for the people they were serving, they took mortgages out of their own homes,” Gingrich said. “That’s not smart, I do not suggest any organization do that, and that also speaks to the passion people have.”

A decade later, more counties in southcentral Pennsylvania say they are going to use their own cash to keep paying providers at least into the fall if needed.

“The majority have stepped up and will continue funding, and that’s kudos to them,” said Susan Blue, CEO and president of Community Services Group, a Lancaster-based organization that provides a host of services for people with mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities.

Last week York County officials said they could continue paying social services providers for as long as 18 months, given a large cash reserve.

“While this is not an ideal situation, York Countians deserve to know that essential services for children, seniors and those in need will not be jeopardized due to a state budget delay,” York County Commissioner Julie Wheeler said in a news release last week.

Lancaster County officials have informed social services providers that they will continue paying them for the time being, while officials work on possible contingency plans for the board of commissioners to review, according to Commissioner Alice Yoder.

A spokesman for the Lancaster commissioners office did not respond to questions about the budget impasse, including how long the county could pay providers and if they’ll share their plans publicly.

Cumberland County has about 100 days’ worth of general fund dollars to cover the bills for social services, Commissioner Jean Foschi said last week. “We’ll be OK until October,” Foschi said, but she warned that Cumberland and other counties may need to take steps that could have repercussions on the county’s overall fiscal strength, like taking out a loan backed by future tax revenues.

Those measures could hurt the county’s credit rating and make future borrowing costlier, she said. “That is no good for the taxpayers of Cumberland County,” Foschi said.

In Berks County, Commissioner Christian Leinbach said the county will not be covering the bills of its service providers during the impasse unless the board decides they need to intervene over a serious health or safety risk.

“It’s our job to determine what is critical health and safety and what is not,” Leinbach said, “and that is not an easy thing, and not a position I want the county to be put in.”

As of Aug. 8, no provider had contacted Berks County for help, Leinbach said, but that could change in the fall, when multiple months of no payments pile up for organizations.

“After Labor Day, it becomes much more challenging,” Leinbach said.