The conference committees have been bustling in advance of the session deadline. House and Senate conference committee members agreed to the Health & Human Services budget amongst other budget areas. The Conference Committee Working Targets spreadsheet shows how each budget area’s current proposal compares to the other policy areas, as well as how each compares to related proposals from earlier on in the session – the Senate, House, Governor’s and the forecast budget amounts. In a nutshell, the conference committee’s HHS budget mirrors the Senate’s original proposal (a $22 million cut to the CCSA fund in FY12-13 and $24 million in FY14-15, with no funding for DHS’s proposed Northstar Care for Children to increase permanency for children in care), and includes cuts more severe than those the Governor proposed, but not as deep as the House’s proposal. You can read more in this MPR article.
The Children’s Defense Fund of Minnesota has released an analysis of the budget proposals that impact children. The report is brief and to-the-point, certainly worth the read. The budget proposals promise to scale back a number of the services that Minnesota’s most vulnerable children rely upon for safety, stability and well-being. The introduction to the report is here, or you can skip straight to the report itself here.