State has new pay grab scheme
It’s time for concerned taxpayers to contact their state legislators and demand retraction of the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare’s Office Mental Retardation (OMR) Bulletin 00-06-06. One of the more disturbing features of the bulletin is a massive pay grab which makes the 2005 legislative pay issue seem small and insignificant in comparison. The bulletin changes the existing state Department of Welfare’s OMR maximum allowance for one chief executive officer position within each contracted human services provider from $113,252 to an unlimited number of CEO positions within each provider, up to a new maximum for each position of $288,841.
In order to finance this pay grab, estimates of the impact of service funding that certain unscrupulous providers will have to redirect from individuals with mental retardation range between $50 million to $70 million statewide.
Other equally disturbing elements of this bulletin and OMR actions involve the relinquishment of county-taxpayer purchased homes for the mentally retarded to private contractors and the removal of county government-imposed health, safety and quality requirements.
While the Office of Mental Retardation has maintained that certain contractual changes are necessary to meet standardized federal contracting requirements, the aforementioned clearly goes beyond reason and justification.
Harry Franks
Uniontown