County: Merge child welfare or deal is off

Erin Neff

Tuesday, March 18, 2003 | 11:20 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Clark County Manager Thom Reilly this morning told state lawmakers that if integration of child welfare is further put on hold due to budgetary concerns, the county will walk away.

"If it doesn't happen this session, Clark County would not be interested in continuing," Reilly told a Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee, testifying from Las Vegas.

Lawmakers were forced to put child welfare integration on hold in Clark County, and have not yet completed integration in Washoe County because of the state's budget woes.

Clark County is now the only one nationwide that has a split system in which the state takes some level of cases and the county takes others. The result, according to numerous studies of the system, is that children fall through the cracks and are more likely to become victims of violence and end up homeless when they leave the system.

The 2001 Legislature approved Assembly Bill 1, Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley's bill to integrate the state and county systems.

Many legislators back the policy of integration, despite the $8 million it will cost. Gov. Kenny Guinn has budgeted the integration, to take effect in Clark County in October 2004.

"It's untenable for me to go part way into this program," Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, said. "Without the new revenue, there's no way to go ahead, and if we don't go ahead, we won't be in compliance with federal acts."

Clark County Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle said that while the state transition into county-run systems is progressing, the system in Clark County is still "a disaster."

"The system is dying, case managers are quitting, and we don't have any money for drug testing," Hardcastle said. "We have tolerated this, or at least lived through this, on the expectation that it will get better."

Hardcastle said failure to integrate will put Nevada at odds with the federal Safe Families Act, subjecting the state to penalties and possible federal receivership of the program.

"I don't worry about a loss of funds or federal receivership," Hardcastle said. "What I worry about is how we treat our children.

"I hope, and I pray we can finish the job," Hardcastle added.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said that while he supports the concept of integration, he wanted more information about the state's future costs for funding integration.

"It's one thing to say it's in the budget, but that budget is not funded," Raggio said.

Raggio said the start of integration in Washoe County resulted in huge costs to the state "just to transfer people from the state to the local governments."

"I'm concerned ultimately with the fairness between state and local governments," Raggio said.

Ed Cotton, administrator of the state's Child and Family Services Division, said the difference between state and local costs in Washoe County were the result of $341,000 in increased salaries. When many state employees became Washoe employees, they had to start at the lowest step on that county's salary scale.

In Clark County it would cost the state $27.9 million to run child welfare, while it would cost the county $33.2 million.

The $5 million gap for 2004 is reduced to $3 million in 2005 after start-up costs for the integration are paid.

The $3 million difference includes six new positions, $700,000 in legal costs once borne by the state Attorney General and indirect costs.

Reilly said Clark County has taken huge steps to plan for integration and has already borne many of the costs associated with integration by paying for things not contained in Guinn's budget.

He said the county absorbed $3 million in cost-of-living adjustment raises and inflation for workers. It has also absorbed $4.4 million in funding for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, he said.

"This discussion of integration really requires that this be decided this session," Reilly said.

Hardcastle warned the committee: "We have gone too far to go back."

Lawmakers on the committees that deal with the state's finances must close state agency budgets within 30 days.