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March 12, 2007

MHANYS Legislative Day Scheduled During
Important Time in the Budget Proces

This Wednesday at MHANYS Legislative Day is a great time to voice your advocacy regarding budget priorities

Location: Well of Legislative Office Building from 9:30 to 12 on March 14th

It is an old cliché but it is true that ‘Life is Timing’. Last year when our former public policy director Michael Seereiter scheduled our Legislative Day for March 14th, we were hoping the timing would be fortuitous to the budget process. Well he turned out to be right.

This past Saturday, the Assembly released their proposed spending initiatives in the budget for mental health. Including in that funding is $600,000 for Parents with Psychiatric Disabilities, long a priority of MHANYS. We are very appreciative of our colleagues at NYAPRS working with us on this issue. Other funding priorities of MHANYS included in the Assembly proposal was $1 million in funding for suicide prevention. This funding is largely geared to the young Latina population and the elderly female Asian population. Also included was funding for the two Centers of Excellence which we highlighted as part of our legislative priorities for our upcoming Legislative Conference. In addition, there was additional funding for the state’s two research facilities---The Psychiatric Institute and The Nathan Kline Institute.

Early this week, the New York State Senate will be releasing their funding priorities. It is expected that later in the week, the Assembly and Senate committees will start meeting to discuss the final funding that will go in the budget. That is why it is so important that we are meeting on Wednesday. It provides us with a real opportunity to meet with the legislative staffs and highlight our priority funding for this year.

Our budget priorities include:

  • $10 million in additional funding for local assistance for community mental health services
  • A Permanent COLA
  • Making sure that anti-depressants are added back to the mental health medications carve out in the Preferred Drug List
  • Insuring that 500 of the 2000 new beds in mental health housing are dedicated to adult home residents
  • $1 million for funding for Parents with Psychiatric Disabilities
  • $3 million for the Geriatric Mental Health Act
  • $1.5 million for Suicide Prevention

We have a great window of opportunity on Wednesday to make our priorities known to the legislature. Though some of our priorities have not been addressed, it is still not too late to instill in the legislators how important these priorities are and how they have to be included in the budget. Make sure you set up meetings with your legislators on Wednesday afternoon. We will have hand outs available listing our priorities and we will go over each of the priorities during our legislative briefings from 9:30 to 12:00 on Wednesday.

Please contact us at (518) 434—0439 with any last minute questions.

MENTAL HEALTH FOUNDATION VIDEO ON DEMAND PROGRAM

Our colleagues at the Mental Health Foundation recently produced a video on Depression. We were very appreciative that they highlighted the work of MHANYS as part of the video as well as the advocacy of our friend and fellow advocate Peter Ashenden of the Mental Health Empowerment Project. What makes this project unique is that this is a Video On Demand package, meaning that the Video is available at any time to subscribers of Time Warner Cable. We look forward to working with the Foundation on future projects as well. For more information about this video and about the Mental Health Foundation, log onto their web site at www.mentalhealthfoundation.net.