Aids Funds Added To Budget Finance Panel Also Includes Extra Cash For Adoption Services, Respite Care

Legislative budget writers took a major step toward squeezing an extra $6 million out of Gov. Phil Batt’s conservative state budget Tuesday, and still managed to add extra cash for AIDS, adoption and respite care.

“We’re talking about human lives,” Democratic Rep. Ken Robison of Boise told the others on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. “It’s a solid investment not only in terms of money but in terms of humanity.”

In a series of votes, the committee added to the Health and Welfare Department spending blueprint $200,000 to extend subsidized triple drug therapy to dozens of additional AIDS victims, $100,000 for services to parents who adopt children with special problems and $100,000 to expand the so-called respite care program credited with keeping ailing people in their homes and out of more expensive nursing homes.

The modest increases over Batt’s spending recommendations were more than offset by major reductions in the governor’s recommendations for upgrading department computers and meeting inflationary operating costs.

Millions of dollars still remain for computer improvements, and analysts conceded a $250million budget can absorb the loss of $1.7 million for increased operating costs.

The net result was a 1999 department budget that is $2 million less than Batt contemplated. And that was after the committee approved the entire $4.2 million the state must spend to match nearly $16 million from the federal government to extend health care to children of poor but working families.

There was still some concern about the ultimate cost of the new health care program, but prospects for any crippling restrictions from the committee appeared to be dissipating.

The search for cash was launched last week at the close of budget hearings when it became obvious that Batt’s general tax budget for 1998-99, based on 5 percent revenue growth augmented by intensified tax collection, would still fall about $6 million short of critical spending needs.

Both Senate Finance Chairman Atwell Parry, R-Melba, and House Appropriations Chairman Bob Geddes, R-Preston, stood firmly against the extra spending “in an effort to not start new programs and increase funding for any agencies.”

But moderates strayed from traditional tactics and proposed only a portion of the money being sought for the new initiatives. That drew in enough conservatives to create a majority.

Instead of $700,000, they pushed just $200,000 for AIDS therapy, highlighting the success in keeping sufferers out of expensive hospitals and in some cases allowing them to return to work.

Rather than $300,000, they sought $100,000 to help in adoptions of children with special medical or other needs, emphasizing that support for the adoption alternative seemed only just after the recent House vote against abortion.

And they discarded the $270,000 recommended supplement for respite care in favor of just $100,000, underscoring the importance of giving family members a break from caring for a relative so they do not burn out and the alternative is an expensive nursing home.

The only close vote was the 10-10 tie that killed an attempt by sheltered workshop operators and others training developmentally disabled people to bolster reimbursements by $750,000 more in state money and over twice that in federal funds.