Sources: De Blasio, Council Reach Deal on Social Service Funding
By Sally Goldenberg and Dan Goldberg Capital New York June 22, 2015
The de Blasio administration has reached a deal with the City Council to continue funding certain organizations that provide physical and mental health services and were in danger of losing their money, four sources involved in budget talks told Capital.
The deal would cover at least $19 million worth of services, the sources said. (They would only speak on background and not for attribution since budget talks are ongoing.)
Under the agreement, which is part of the Fiscal Year 2016 budget, the Council will resume control of a series of social services that would have been handled by the administration.
The issue has been a matter of dispute between City Hall and the Council since former mayor Michael Bloomberg made permanent $504 million worth of services in late 2013. In that action, known as “baselining,” he gave City Hall control over funding that was previously handled by the Council.
As a result, the administration would pick its own individual providers for those services through a competitive bid process. The Council, which had long funded organizations that provide these services, worried that those groups would lose funding because they would not qualify for the bids.
When de Blasio took office last year, he extended the contracts for those providers for one year. The issue came to the fore in recent months as health and mental health organizations realized they may not get their standard allocations from the Council’s discretionary budget.
Some of those groups were recently notified by the city health department that their funding will be extended at least through the summer, according to portions of emails provided to Capital.
The deal comes after months of negotiations, private pleas and public press conferences in which leaders of suicide hotlines and cancer groups begged the mayor for additional funding. They argued their services were different and in some cases more specialized that those covered by the competitive bids.
Fearing a loss of funding would lead to fewer programs, several social service groups spoke to the media, testified at Council hearings and held press conferences on the steps of City Hall, warning that services New Yorkers counted on could disappear.
Just last week, Planned Parenthood and the Northern Manhattan Perinatal Partnership joined a rally over the potential loss of their funding.
And last month, the Samaritans suicide hotline was been given a one-year extension after the Daily News reported its funding was going to be cut.
A budget agreement is expected to be announced between de Blasio and the Council as early as Monday night.