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Show Utah Counties Call On State To Fund Mandate The leaders of Utah's 29 counties are calling on the state legislature to restore some untimely un-timely cuts reflected in the proposed FY 1998-99 budget. Under the governor's tentative budget, the counties collectively take a $1.2 million dollar hit in their human services programs. Counties provide a number of human service programs mandated manda-ted by the state of Utah. Under prior agreement with the State, county governments have expended expend-ed matching funds from 10-30 percent per-cent while the state is supposed to pay 70-90 percent of the cost. Over the years, that ratio has eroded to where some programs are 50-50. The proposed budget fails to address any compensation increase for the counties which provide state services. "Counties, under contract, provide human services for state-mandated state-mandated programs," says Utah County Commissioner Dave Gardner, Gard-ner, Chair of the Human Services Committee for the Utah Association Associ-ation of Counties (UAC). "Our concern is that the state is not living up to its obligations and responsibilities." Since 1993 the state has provided pro-vided Cost of Living Adjust-ments (COLA) for county workers just like they do for their own state workers. "It's a system that has worked and we're very concerned with this sudden change," added Commissioner Gardner. Called a Provider Rate Increase, In-crease, the COLA, by law, had to be included in the governor's budget proposal or the legislature had to be notified. The legislature legis-lature was notified in a simple footnote in the budget plan. "Over the years the amount of funding for these programs has not kept pace with the tremendous tremen-dous growth that Utah has been experiencing," says Commissioner Commission-er Carol Page. "What began as state and federally-funded matching match-ing programs has become much more than that for our local governments, and we believe our ' employees deserve the same consideration con-sideration as state workers for the services they provide." County human service programs pro-grams include: substance abuse, mental health, aging services, youth services, and public health. |