Funding Issues

FY 2008 Legislative Agenda: This is an extremely important time of year in Virginia. We encourage you to become familiar with the issues and to write to your state senators and delegates, asking them to support certain priority budget issues. The following items are all related to supporting people with disabilities in finding community based employment:

• Provide $1.8 M to eliminate the Department of Rehabilitative Services Order of Selection (waitlist) and provide employment opportunities for 500 eligible individuals so they can work and live independently in the community.


• Restore the $264,000 cut for employment support services to 132 Virginians with disabilities receiving funding for Extended Employment Services (EES) and Long Term Employment Support Services (LTESS). Eliminating employment opportunities for Virginia taxpayers with disabilities does not make economic sense.


• Provide $3 M for Long Term Employment Support Services (LTESS) for 1,500 people with disabilities who want to become employed and need innovative employment supports to remain employed, contribute to the tax base, and live in the community.


• Adjust the Medicaid Waiver individual supported employment rate to enable waiver participants to become employed. Less than one-half of one percent of waiver participants are employed. Rates must parallel Supported Employment rates assigned by the Department of Rehabilitative Services to individual Employment Service Organizations (such as ICON) to satisfy Commonwealth procurement laws.

For ICON, adjusting the Medicaid Waiver rate is by far the most important issue. That item alone would have a HUGE impact on our abililty to serve people with significant disabilities, using the individualized approach that is central to our philosophy. Many of these people formerly worked in individual jobs, but as Medicaid Waiver funding has grown and other avenues of support have decreased, they have been placed in low-wage or no-wage congregate settings because the Medicaid Waiver rate for individualized services covers less than one-third of the cost in Northern Virginia. We think the Commonwealth as well as the individuals would benefit if we can provide the support they need to become employed, tax paying citizens!

Thank you all for your help with this very important issue.

Get contact information for your State Senator and Representative at Virginia's Who's My Legislator? page. This page also has links to detailed information about current legislative issues, updated daily while the legislature is in session.

The Fairfax County Districts are shown on Fairfax County's Board of Supervisors page. If you need more detail to determine which district you're in, check the small-scale maps of each district which are available through a link on the individual district page (select a district by clicking on its name on the County map).

Federal Congresspersons may be found at the House and Senate websites.

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