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State lawmakers, social service providers mull policies, minimum wage at breakfast

Standard-Speaker - 2/22/2020

Feb. 22--WILKES-BARRE -- Good intentions don't always lead to good policies, providers of social services and state lawmakers said during breakfast Friday.

On proposals to raise the minimum wage or require people with disabilities to spend more time visiting places in the community, regulations can defeat the goal, the leader of a social service lobby group said.

Richard Edley of the Rehabilitative and Community Providers Association said having people with disabilities spend more time in the community is a great idea.

But a rule saying people are to visit community places such as stores and museums in groups of three or smaller hurts the nonprofit groups that offer days programs.

A rule requiring one worker to accompany three individuals on outings is impractical. If one of the people has to go to the restroom with the worker, for example, the other two people are alone. To obey the rule, providers would have to send two workers on each outing, if they could afford to hire them.

The association, which proposed allowing groups of six people to go out with two workers, is in the midst of a lawsuit against the state to resolve differences with the rule, Edley said.

Without a rule change, the day programs that many people with disabilities enjoy might close or erode.

Similarly, Edley said few people in the room, including leaders of agencies that provide group homes or offer counseling and other social services, would oppose raising the minimum wage and paying mandatory overtime to more supervisory workers.

But if the wage goes to $12 an hour, as Gov. Tom Wolf proposed, Edley asked how providers can afford the extra pay.

Fran Emershaw, chief executive officer of Northeast Counseling, said his agency can't pay wages to match what people can earn working for local warehouses, factories or local governments.

"The people who get in aren't in for the money, but they do need money to live," Emershaw said.

Hearing that intake workers at agencies might make $24,000 a year, state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-121, Wilkes-Barre, said, "You can't raise a family on that. The point is we're out of balance."

He encouraged the providers to lobby for more funds and policies that make sense.

"That's the power of our democracy," Pashinski said.

Tara Gwilliam, chief executive officer of Cori's Place, a day program in Hanover Twp., asked how the governor can close the White Haven Center and send the residents who have intellectual disabilities into the community when group homes don't have room.

"Where are these people going to go?" Gwilliam said.

"That's probably fair," state Rep. Mike Carroll, D-118, Avoca, replied. Carroll thinks the state's policies sprung from a sincere effort to be helpful, but said the state needs to reconcile those intensions with the programs that exist and decide how to staff them.

"At the end of the day you're getting into a conversation about money and tax policy, and you're in the deep end of the pool where it gets very hard," Carroll said.

State Rep. Aaron Kaufer, R-120, Kingston, told two stories that indicate that the state isn't always ready when people cry for help.

A friend who called a hotline because of a gambling problem is still waiting for information he was promised, Kaufer said.

Similarly, a high school classmate who admitted he needed help for heroin addition came into Kaufer's office on a Friday looking for a detox center.

After several phone calls, they couldn't find a facility to take the man before Monday.

Among the bills that Kaufer has proposed are requirements that insurers more clearly explain what drug treatment and other social services their policies cover.

"Everybody has this in their insurance. No one can access it," he said after breakfast.

Audits have shown that insurance companies frequently fail to follow exiting law for clients who have drug and alcohol problems or intellectual disabilities, Kaufer said.

Other bills he backs would set up centers to help veterans readjust to society and to have county Children and Youth workers see children in schools.

Often Child and Youth has to interview children apart from their parents, and schools need the help, Kaufer said.

Pashinski said schools are short of social workers "because children are coming in with psychological problems."

All lawmakers responded to a question about legalizing marijuana.

Carroll said he doesn't think Pennsylvania is ready to legalize the drug yet. A driver could test positive for marijuana days after using it even though its effects had worn off.

Kaufer supports decriminalizing marijuana and said if technology to test drivers existed, the drug already would be legal.

"My generation doesn't care if you go out and have a drink or if you smoke marijuana," Kaufer said.

Pashinski likened sales of marijuana to Prohibition and asked if the state will continue to allow marijuana to be solid illegally without taxing it.

Despite his years leading a rock band, Pashinski said he never smoked pot. He was a teacher, had a family said the risks were too great.

Contact the writer: kjackson@standard

speaker.com; 570-501-3587

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