Kentucky close to settlement for funding disability services

From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Advocates and state officials appeared in U.S. District Court in Lexington July 14 for a hearing on a proposed settlement that could help as many as 10,000 intellectually disabled Kentuckians in the next six years, according to court documents.

The 2 p.m. hearing is before U.S. District Judge Joseph M. Hood, who earlier this year expressed impatience with the state's delay in providing services it first agreed to make available in 2006.

Both sides have agreed on a proposed settlement that could trigger services to some disabled people as soon as next month, said William Dolan, a lawyer for Kentucky Protection and Advocacy, a watchdog agency that filed the class-action lawsuit in 2002.

Hood already has given it preliminary approval, he said.

The settlement calls for the cabinet to provide services for 3,000 people this year, adding 1,500 a year until reaching 10,000, according to an order Hood issued June 9.

Hood, who must give final approval to the plan, said in his June 9 order that he believed it to be "fair, adequate and reasonable."

Services for the disabled, paid for through Medicaid, would be limited to 40 hours a week per person and could include adult day care, therapy and housekeeping help aimed at allowing people to stay at home rather than go to institutions, Dolan said.

The original settlement announced in 2006 called for up to 10,000 people to be served in the first year at up to 50 hours a week. Because of various bureaucratic delays, the program never got started, and earlier this year, lawyers for the plaintiffs went back to court to force the state to carry out the agreement.

By then, lawyers for the new administration of Gov. Steve Beshear told the judge they didn't think the state had enough money to carry out the program agreed to by the administration of predecessor Ernie Fletcher.

Beshear included $5 million a year for the next two years in his budget for the settlement. The $10 million in state money will draw about $24 million more in federal Medicaid funds.

Dolan said he thinks the new settlement, which would phase in participants and provide them with fewer hours of service, is more workable and will still help those in need. He said state officials have said they could begin serving the first participants as soon as next month.