Proposals for disabled backed

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001 | 11:26 a.m.

Advocates for disabled Nevadans are applauding proposals by Gov. Kenny Guinn to make it easier for such individuals to keep their jobs and obtain state services.

But they fear that the governor's proposed new Office of Disability Resource Development and Planning, which would combine existing state agencies, will be ineffective if it is placed as planned under the Nevada Department of Human Resources.

In his Monday evening State of the State address, Guinn said the office will "create a long-range plan to better provide services to individuals of all ages with disabilities."

If approved by the Legislature, the office will open July 1. Human Resources Director Charlotte Crawford said Tuesday that the plan is to put the office under her department, at least temporarily, while the state determines the best way to deliver services to disabled individuals.

"We don't yet understand the full scope of how these services should be best organized," Crawford said. "So I don't want to close the door to anything."

There are some divisions of the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, for instance, that would be combined with agencies in Human Resources to help form the office.

The idea to combine state agencies into a "one-stop shopping" experience for disabled individuals was the brainchild of associate professor Thomas Pierce, chairman of UNLV's Special Education Department. The 1999 Legislature approved the concept but provided no funding, so the concept died.

The idea was revived when Pierce met with Guinn's government reorganization advisory committee. But Pierce said his preference is for the office to operate as its own free-standing department.

"The original concept was to make it a separate unit," Pierce said. "Human Resources can't do everything in the state. They are already an enormously large department. Getting lost in the department is easy, especially for vulnerable populations."

Pierce said his idea was to create a department staffed by individuals who specialized in disability law and regulations and who were knowledgeable on issues ranging from housing to respite care. He said he is not confident Human Resources can pull that off.

Neither is Mary Evilsizer, executive director of the Southern Nevada Center For Independent Living. She said she fears the proposed new office would become overwhelmed by the Human Resources' bureaucracy.

"The Department of Human Resources is good at dealing with Medicaid money but those are programs that are not as consumer friendly as we in the independent living community would like them to be," Evilsizer said. "I'm not sure that putting the office under Human Resources would be consumer friendly."

But Guinn spokesman Jack Finn said making the office its own department was "far too costly" and that placing it under Human Resources would be a more effective way to deliver services.

The governor also proposed spending $500,000 on a comprehensive plan to define and demographically identify Nevada's disability community in order to help create more efficient services. An additional $600,000 was earmarked by the governor to help disabled workers maintain their Medicare or Medicaid coverage while employed.

Both ideas were applauded by Ed Guthrie, executive director of Opportunity Village in Las Vegas, which provides services for disabled individuals. He also backs a Guinn proposal to beef up funding that will eliminate waiting lists for developmentally disabled individuals, such as those with autism, cerebral palsy and Down's syndrome. As of Tuesday there were 68 such individuals on waiting lists for state services, Finn said.

But Guthrie said expanding services to cover more individuals will do no good if the state fails to increase its reimbursement rates to service providers such as Opportunity Village. Guthrie said state reimbursements have not kept pace with the increasing costs of providing services.

"Eliminating the waiting lists is absolutely fantastic but the problem is there is no rate increase to go with that," Guthrie said. "I don't know if the service providers will be able to help them. If the state is paying only 80 percent of the cost of providing services, why would an agency want to provide more services?"

Guthrie and Evilsizer also commended Guinn for proposing to double from $1.2 million to $2.4 million the amount of state money that would be spent annually on services to help keep physically disabled individuals at home with their families to avoid being place in an institution. But Evilsizer said she would like Guinn to consider extending those funding increases to other disabled individuals.

"What they're doing is focusing on one group," she said. "What about people with mental disabilities who can benefit from the same thing?"