Nursing Home Reactions

Last night's six and half hour meeting (notes, notes, and more notes here) was a long train of budget discussions and dire warnings for the upcoming 2018 budget. The Republicans and department heads painted a pretty bleak picture. When they were going through each department on the areas of each budget, keeping in mind that everyone is jealous of their own funding, it did start to paint a picture of agencies already with a reduced staff making do with the bare essentials. e.g. Blakeman with the secretary for three lawyers, doing ones own IT, PR, relying on loaned free real estate for a program and relying on various outside grants to round out the numbers. 

I try to stay a bit cynical as politics is necessarily theatrical in part. But, it was hard to come away from that meeting without Snider's statement about the budget/cuts not having recovered from the great recession ringing true.

County Board Member Joshua Hartke shared this response:

The nursing home can be very sustainable. You just never hear about the 95% of its history when it was.

3 years ago, we had almost a million dollars in the bank, 200 residents, and 3 and 4 star ratings on care. Since Rauner came in as governor, they have gradually strangled the Medicaid approvals so much that we have fallen behind on payments.

Private nursing homes all over the state are declaring bankruptcy because of this. Our public facility is insulated from some of that, but only for a while.

This is publicly subsidized health care. If you believe in single payer or universal coverage or a public option, you need to be supportive of the nursing home.

Of COURSE administrators claim to be short staffed. I don't think I've ever been in a budget meeting where one of these folks came in and said, "Nope. Don't need anything new. We're doing just fine."

Where the problem is in our county is the fact that almost twenty years ago we installed PTELL property tax caps. That keeps the levy we can raise from being increased any more the CPI. Health care costs are constantly double that in how they increase.

So, again, single payer would be a solution. In the meantime, we have to fight for what our priorities are as citizens of this county. For me, that is providing nursing care to our oldest and most vulnerable citizens. Far more than anyone worried about whether their lawyers have enough secretaries.

Tom Kacich had a photo of the turnout:

Here's an excerpt from the News-Gazette which had an article on the meeting: Nursing home's future more uncertain after marathon meeting

URBANA — Taking advantage of the absence of two Democrats, a majority on the Champaign County Board on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning delivered a series of damaging blows to the county-owned nursing home.

Democrats Robert King and Shana Jo Crews were missing from the nearly 6 1 / 2-hour committee of the whole meeting that ended at 12:57 a.m. Wednesday, during which the board's 10 Republicans and Champaign Democrat Pattsi Petrie failed to approve separate motions to renew or rescind $400,000 in loans made earlier this year to the nursing home from the county's general fund.

The result is that County Auditor John Farney, in one of his last official acts before he becomes the county treasurer, would have to collect on the loans to the nursing home on Dec. 29.

The current treasurer, Dan Welch, told the county board that the nursing home already is cash strapped, with only $117,000 on hand Tuesday and another biweekly payroll due next week.

The first vote, to renew the loans, failed 10-10.

The second one, to rescind the loans, lost 11-9.

Rescinding the loans would have meant that the county would recognize the loans as "bad debt since there's no likelihood of repayment," resulting in a $400,000 loss to the county's general fund.

It's unclear whether the county board can revisit the issue — and possibly take another vote — next Tuesday.