Local council to lose right to serve elderly and disabled
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| Update |
- Previously: A federal agency told the state that it botched an effort to remove a multimillion-dollar contract from a Hazel Dell senior-services nonprofit, the Human Services Council.
- What’s new: The same agency said that the state’s second attempt was successful, and ordered the HSC to lose the contract.
- What’s next: Barring further legal action, a state agency will manage the same employees as they do the same services.
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Saturday, April 26, 2008
By Michael Andersen, Columbian Staff WriterAfter two years of investigation and litigation, a Hazel Dell nonprofit seems almost certain to lose its right to offer some social services to seniors and disabled people in Southwest Washington.
A federal hearing officer ruled Friday that the Human Services Council (HSC) had failed state requirements for its organizational structure and fiscal policies.
The officer also upheld the state’s finding that dissatisfaction with the HSC among the people it serves has “irreparably compromised” the agency’s ability to do its job.
The ruling only affects services provided through the Southwest Washington Agency on Aging, which until Friday was overseen by the HSC.
Those services include case management, home-health care, and respite care in Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania, Wahkiakum and Klickitat counties.
The HSC’s contract to deliver those services has provided about half its $5.5 million annual budget.
The ruling caps a long battle over the contract, which the state began criticizing in 2006. State Rep. Jim Moeller, chairman of the HSC’s board, said Friday that he doubted there were enough votes on the board to continue its legal battle, which had cost more than $50,000 by last winter.
Representatives for the HSC and for the state of Washington said Friday that employees and the public shouldn’t see any immediate changes.
“Services will continue; case management will still happen; all of that stuff will get paid,” said Bill Moss, director of home and community services in the state’s Agency and Disability Services Administration.
The HSC will continue to offer other services including volunteer coordination and various transportation services.
Service cuts needed?
Moeller said he was dismayed by the ruling.
“We see it as a loss for the aged in Southwest Washington,” he said. “There’s not going to be any more money, but there’s going to be a lot more administrative costs, and it’s just going to result in fewer services.”
Service cuts will come within a few years, he predicted.
A member of the citizens’ advisory board for the Southwest Washington Agency on Aging — the group that the state is removing from the HSC — disagreed
“Oh, baloney,” said Maggie Culbertson, a former chairwoman of the advisory board. “As a matter of fact, we’ll probably increase services.”
“It’s got to be a big relief for (Southwest Washington Agency on Aging) employees, the nurses, the program managers,” Culbertson said of Friday’s ruling. “Everybody’s been in such an uncertain mode now for almost two years. … I’m feeling really good about this.”
At two hours-long hearings in the last year, many Southwest Washington Agency on Aging workers told the state, sometimes tearfully, that they wanted to leave the HSC.
Penny Black, a predecessor of Moss, will be interim director of the Southwest Washington Agency on Aging, Moss said. She returns Thursday from a vacation.
Eventually the state will find a new agency to administer the Southwest Washington Agency on Aging.
The Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania and Wahkiakum county governments have already drawn up rules for a new group, administered by Cowlitz County, designed to do that job.
Moeller said the HSC’s board will probably hold an emergency meeting next week to discuss its own options.
Dispute over contracts
Though both the HSC and the state urged employees to keep reporting for work at the HSC’s offices, who they’ll be working for was unclear Friday.
“Essentially, the contracts all ended today,” Moeller said Friday. “The AAA was essentially in AD
SA’s hands as of this afternoon. … We’re going to make the assumption that ADSA’s going to reimburse us and everybody’s going to show up on Monday morning.”
Moss disagreed.
“Our contract with HSC is still in place, and we would expect them to comply with that contract,” he said.
Asked why the state and HSC hadn’t worked out such details in advance of the long-awaited federal ruling, Moss said:
“When we feel like we’re going to get upheld, they feel like they’re going to get upheld, it’s very difficult to get to any kind of substantive discussions around a transition. Do you know what I mean?”
Michael Andersen covers social services: 360-735-4508 or
michael.andersen@columbian.com.
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