Gov. Katie Hobbs can veto a bill cutting parents’ pay to care for their profoundly disabled children, and funds will run out now. Or she can sign it and put off disaster until next year.
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What a shameful spectacle at the Legislature, when Republicans packed a House committee in order to cut funding for parents who care for their seriously disabled children.
These children, many needing round-the-clock care, have become a tool — a bludgeon that Republicans are using to bash Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Never mind that the people being hurt are these families. These children, who may ultimately wind up costing the state more money as they are institutionalized because their parents simply can no longer afford to stay home and care for them.
The Republican headline on this story is that they’re agreeing to cover a $122 million shortfall for disability services in this year’s budget, ensuring that services to disabled Arizonans aren’t cut off in May.
But the price they’re exacting is steep: A requirement that the state seek permission from Medicaid to cut funding for parents who act as paid caregivers from 40 hours to 20 hours a week next year.
Arizona could pay more if kids are institutionalized
“We’ve been on the edge of a cliff … ,” Jaime Kelley pleaded this week through tears, talking of the strain of caring for her profoundly disabled daughter who needs ICU-level care.
Hers was just one of dozens of stories of parents who talked of the scarcity of workers willing to do the job and of a desire to keep their children home rather than institutionalizing them, ultimately costing the state more money.
“Please hear me,” Kelley said.
Tragically, Republicans were too busy trashing Hobbs to do so.
The Parents as Paid Caregivers Program was created in 2020, when parents couldn’t find people to come into their homes to care for their disabled minor children due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The program, which pays parents to stay home with children who need “extraordinary care,” was fully federally funded until this month. Now, the state picks up a third of the tab.
GOP jumped to fund school vouchers, not this
Meanwhile, the program has exploded in popularity, doubling to more than 6,000 families this year and exhausting the Division of Developmental Disabilities’ budget two months before the end of the fiscal year.
Thus came Hobbs’ request in January for a supplemental appropriation.
The $122 million shortfall is less than half of last year’s $274 million shortfall in the school voucher program, also due to popularity. But, of course, GOP lawmakers revere that program, so ESA parents weren’t forced to get on their knees and beg.
This one, not so much.
For months, Republicans have been howling that Hobbs expanded the PPCG program without their permission, casting her as a spendthrift who crashed the budget and now wants to the Legislature to bail her out.
Now, finally, with two weeks until the money runs out, the GOP-run Legislature is ready to act.
But the Republicans’ proposal comes with a few “reforms,” the most significant of which calls for slashing in half the number of hours that parents can be paid starting in July 2026.
There aren’t enough caregivers to help at home
Dozens of parents flocked to the Capitol on April 15, as the House and Senate budget committees held simultaneous hearings on their plan to cover the budget shortfall.
Lawmakers pointed out that Medicaid still will pay third-party contractors to come into the home to provide care for these children, but parents explained that those workers don’t exist — not enough of them, anyway.
The pay is low. The work is hard, and the alternative is to put their children into group-care facilities, a move parents say would cost the state closer to $200,000 a year rather than the average $45,000 paid through the PPCG program.
From a fiscal standpoint, it makes no sense.
From a human standpoint, it’s even worse.
“Lives are on the line here … ,” said Michele Thorne, who has two autistic children and runs Care 4 the Caregivers, providing support for parents. “When you cut hours for parents, what you’re doing is cutting services for children.”
Lawmakers didn’t have to do this.
House speaker ensured the pay cut would pass
There was bipartisan support in the House Appropriations Committee to fund the shortfall without slashing future pay to parents.
But minutes before the hearing, the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small reports that House Speaker Steve Montenegro assigned three additional Republicans to the panel, ensuring enough GOP votes to kill the bipartisan amendment offered by Rep. Julie Willoughby, R-Chandler.
Her proposal, to continue paying parents 40 hours a week, was rejected on a 11-10 vote.
Willoughby was brought to tears, explaining that she’d been warned not to sacrifice her political career by offering her amendment.
“I choose you as my hill to die on,” Willoughby told the parents. “I’m sorry. I’m pro-life, and I’m pro-life through the entire spectrum of life.”
Disaster is coming for disabled kids, either way
Ultimately, both budget panels approved the bill filling the shortfall but cutting parents’ pay in half next year.
It’s unclear what Hobbs will do, should it land on her desk.
If she vetoes the bill, disaster will strike the disabled community in just two weeks when funding runs out for all services offered through the Division of Developmental Disabilities.
If she signs it, disaster is put off until next year.
Either way, it’s a disaster for some of the most vulnerable children in our state.
Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social.
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