Category Archives: Nonprofits

Unions try to thwart $250M Southampton hospital project

Source: Aidan Gardiner, The Real Deal, June 12, 2018
 
Three unions — the Civil Service Employees Association, New York State United Teachers and the Public Employees Federation — are trying to block state legislation necessary to build a $250 million hospital on Stony Brook’s Southampton’s campus, 27 East reported. The unions don’t like the plan for operating the hospital once it’s built, saying that the majority of the employees would not be subject to civil service laws. The legislation, which needs to be voted on before the legislature closes on June 20, would allow Stony Brook to lease the property to the nonprofit Southampton Hospital Association, which would then raise the money to build the hospital. …

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State Unions Throw Up Roadblock To Key Bill Clearing The Way For New Hospital In Southampton
Source: Joseph P. Shaw, 27 East, June 8, 2018
 
State unions are working to block legislation to clear the way for Stony Brook Southampton Hospital to begin raising money for a new facility on the college campus, apparently concerned about the potential future impact on the workers they represent. … But a trio of state unions representing workers at hospitals like Stony Brook University Hospital, which is owned and operated by the State University of New York system, have formally opposed the legislation, worried that it might be an attempt to move jobs from the public sector to the private sector. At issue is the unusual arrangement at the heart of plans for the new hospital, a key to the affiliation agreement between the former Southampton Hospital and the Stony Brook system that was finalized less than a year ago, according to Mr. Chaloner. … Three state unions—the Civil Service Employees Association, New York State United Teachers and the Public Employees Federation—issued a memo strongly opposing the legislation. Their concerns, Mr. Chaloner said, are rooted in the fact that Southampton Hospital was a private entity, and its workers remain represented by a different union focusing on the private sector, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. …

Jenne introduces bill to create public benefit corporation for Massena Hospital

Source: Abraham Kenmore, Watertown Daily Times, June 1, 2018
 
A bill introduced by Assemblywoman Addie A.E. Jenne, D-Theresa, on Tuesday would move the publicly owned Massena Memorial Hospital into a public benefit corporation, shifting financial responsibility away from the town while keeping the hospital from going private. … The Massena Memorial Hospital has been looking to find a private hospital to affiliate with for several years now, as the hospital continually operates at a loss. At the end of 2017, the hospital reported it had a net annual loss of $5.6 million — an improvement over the prior year when it had lost $6.8 million. … The bill is supported by the state Civil Service Employees Association, whose Local 887 represents hospital employees.  “This is supported, we have supported in the past and continue to support,” said Mark Kotzin, spokesman for CSEA. “CSEA has always been opposed to privatizing the hospital.”  Mr. Kotzin said the union had been working with Ms. Jenne for some time. …

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Massena Memorial Hospital sees big financial improvement, but still finishes January in the red
Source: Andy Gardner, North Country Now, February 28, 2018
 
Massena Memorial Hospital finished January in the red but saw a significantly lower net loss than in previous months, where they were bleeding huge sums of money. The hospital lost $61,556 in January, which is down sharply from the $1.8 million loss they booked for December. … At the December meeting, Kerrie French, the president of MMH’s CSEA chapter, expressed concern over the hospital’s leasing a Da Vinci robotic surgery tool. She questioned the hospital for paying the lease at a time when she says staff are being cut. MMH CEO Robert Wolleben said the tool is being used elsewhere in the region and is bringing in patients who would have gone to other facilities. A statement given to the press at the close of the meeting says the tool “offers patients less blood loss, less pain, shorter hospital stay, and small incisions for minimal scarring.” …

Massena Memorial lost more than $5 million in 2017; CFO says operation deficit was less than 2016
Source: Andy Gardner, North Country Now, January 22, 2018
 
After losing $1.8 million in December, Massena Memorial Hospital finished 2017 more than $5 million in the red, but financial documents show they generated more income than last year and ended with a smaller loss from operations.  “We did better than the previous year, it’s not exactly where we want to be but it’s better than the previous year by $1.2 million … generated $6 million more net revenue than the previous year because of new physicians, new services,” MMH CFO Pat Facteau said. … The head of MMH’s CSEA chapter questioned their use of the device at a time when she says positions are being cut.  “I know there’s been some cutbacks on staffing. With this DaVinci tool, I’ve heard it’s $18,000 a month for rental. Are we actually making $18,000 a month to at least break even? Without leasing that, it would save us a lot of jobs,” union president Kerri French asked.  Wolleben said her figure was wrong, and they are paying $15,200 a month on a lease. He says they acquired it to stay competitive in the region and they need to perform a few procedures per month to break even. …

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Bill passes in Senate that avoids strike of group home workers

Source: Rick Lessard, Fox61, May 5, 2018
 
Senate passed a bill Saturday afternoon that will raise wages non-profit group home workers, which prevented a worker strike that was scheduled for May 7. The bill would provide a $14.75 minimum wage and a 5% increase for workers above $14.75 effective January 1, 2019.  This wage increase will cover 18,000 union and non-union workers who care for the disabled. …

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Without new workers contract, costly strike preparations loom for state
Source: Emillie Munson, CT Post, May 1, 2018
 
The state will commence costly strike preparations on Thursday if the General Assembly does not act in the next 36 hours on a new contract for workers who care for disabled people, House Democrats warned Tuesday. Some 2,400 unionized workers have threatened to strike on May 7, two days before the end of the legislative session. They are pressing for a contract that would impact thousands of employees in privatized homes and day programs for the disabled. Many of these workers have not received raises in years. Strike preparations involve hiring replacement workers and security to work while striking employees are protesting. Each day of the strike might cost the state close to $1 million, said House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, on Tuesday.

Connecticut Nonprofits Support Strike of Their Caregiver Workforce
Source: Ruth McCambridge, NonProfit Quarterly, April 30, 2018

Even as news stories proliferated over the weekend on the crisis in the caregiver workforce serving people with disabilities, in Connecticut, 2,400 employees of nine nonprofit agencies voted to authorize a strike that will begin in the early morning of May 7th. Supporting the strike are not just the agencies employing the workers but also the state’s nonprofit alliance (join yours today). … “We’ve reached a crisis of underfunding in the care our state provides people with disabilities and the workers who care for them,” SEIU 1199 spokesperson Jennifer Schneider said. “When privatized group homes and programs are shuttering and workers are forced to work 80 hours a week just to make ends meet, something has to change. …

Audit finds state lacks documented oversight of new foster care model

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Source: Allie Morris, San Antonio Express-News, April 1, 2018

A recent audit found flaws in the state’s oversight of a new foster care model that further privatizes the system and is set to roll out in Bexar County soon. In the new model, a contractor manages foster care providers within a certain region, instead of the state. The Legislature approved expansion of the model last session as a way to improve the embattled foster care system, which is facing a long-running class-action lawsuit by foster children who claim they faced abuse, constant movement and overmedication. The state audit found the Department of Family and Protective Services conducted site visits to ensure contractor ACH Child and Family Services was in compliance. But the state didn’t have documentation to show whether it verified that ACH monitored all 107 foster care providers in its seven-county area, which includes Fort Worth, or whether their oversight was effective. In one instance, state auditors reported that ACH hadn’t monitored one foster care provider for more than 18 months as children continued being placed there. …

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New Texas Law Will Create A More Private Foster Care System
Source: Becky Fogel, September 5, 2017

On Sept. 1, hundreds of new laws took effect in Texas. A number were aimed at improving the state’s child welfare system. Failure to do so was not an option. … In December 2015, after a wave of reports about Texas kids dying from neglect and abuse while in foster care, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack found the state’s foster care system was unconstitutional and deemed it “broken.” Fast forward to May, when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a number of bills to overhaul that system. The case hasn’t been dismissed. But one of the major changes to the foster care system that lawmakers approved during this year’s legislative session was already in the works before Texas was sued in 2011. It was originally called Foster Care Redesign – and now that Senate Bill 11 has taken effect, it establishes a model that increasingly privatizes the foster care system. The program will begin rolling out across the state soon. But the term “model” is a bit misleading, since the redesign is not a one-size-fits all program.

… The foster care model envisioned by Senate Bill 11 is already in use by one community provider. In fact, ACH Child and Family Services in north Texas has been at it for three years. … Over the last three years, the non-profit ACH actually lost money. Carson says they spent $6 million building up services in the region they managed. Considering this extra investment, does the state really need to privatize the foster care system to get better results, or did it just get bad results because it was underfunded for decades? …

Abbott signs Texas bills on CPS, foster care, though federal judge may have last word
Source: Robert T. Garrett, Dallas News, May 30, 2017

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed into law “landmark legislation” that he said would improve child protection in Texas. … Two of the bills he signed seek to give CPS workers more options after they remove children from abusive and neglectful homes. One begins moving toward a community-centered system of procuring foster care beds and services, using area nonprofits or local governments. By September 2019, in a total of five areas, the state would give private providers “case management” duties now performed by CPS workers. … The bill’s author, Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, and House sponsor James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, yielded to a decade-long push by foster care providers to be able to take over CPS conservatorship workers’ duties in those five regions.
… Skeptics have noted, though, that good early results in Tarrant and six nearby counties were achieved using state workers as well as the private entities. …

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Despite 34 making six figures, true amounts of JobsOhio salaries still lowballed

Source: Randy Ludlow, Columbus Dispatch, March 12, 2018
 
JobsOhio continues to under report the amounts it pays employees — including 34 workers who make at least six-figure annual salaries — in a move that could run contrary to state law. In its 2017 filings with the state, Gov. John Kasich’s privatized economic development agency again reported employees’ taxable income — which does not include salary diverted to non-taxable retirement contributions and health insurance costs — instead of their gross income. State law requires the nonprofit to report “total compensation.” But its practice of reporting only taxable income serves to understate employee earnings by thousands of dollars each. …

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Justices again rule JobsOhio can’t be challenged
Source: Randy Ludlow, Columbus Dispatch, August 31, 2016

The Ohio Supreme Court stood on identical ground Wednesday to reject another attempt to declare JobsOhio unconstitutional. In a 6-1 vote, the court ruled that Victoria Ullmann, a Columbus lawyer, lacked the legal right — or standing — to pursue her action seeking to declare Gov. John Kasich’s privatized economic development agency as illegal. … The court threw out another challenge to JobsOhio in 2014 on grounds the parties lacked proper standing, leaving some to question then if the legality of the nonprofit could ever be questioned in the courts. Ullmann argued she had standing to sue since she, and other Ohioans, support JobsOhio through their purchase of liquor, the profits from which support the entity under its long-term lease of state’s liquor sales enterprise. … Ullmann sued Kasich, Secretary of State Jon Husted and Auditor Dave Yost, asking that the court order the Republicans to take steps to dissolve JobsOhio. A spokesman for Attorney General Mike DeWine, who defended the officeholders, said his office was pleased with the ruling. … JobsOhio reported earlier this year it attracted a record 23,602 new jobs and $6.7 billion in corporate investment in 2015. The agency reported revenue of slightly more than $1 billion last year, largely from the state’s liquor-sales operation, which racked up record sales last year to produce net income of $235.2 million. …

Liberal group’s challenge to JobsOhio rejected by Ohio Supreme Court
Source: Jackie Borchardt, Northeast Ohio Media Group, June 10, 2014

Ohio’s highest court on Tuesday rejected a challenge from a progressive group and two Democrats challenging the constitutionality of JobsOhio, the state’s private, nonprofit economic development agency. In a 5-2 decision, the Supreme Court held that ProgressOhio.org, state Sen. Michael Skindell of Lakewood and former state Rep. Dennis Murray do not have standing — the legal right to pursue its claim in court — to bring an action against the legislation that created JobsOhio. The court also held that the plaintiffs lack a personal stake in the outcome of the case.

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Central chooses contractor to run next five years of privatized government

Source: Andrea Gallo, The Advocate, January 9, 2018

People in Central should expect another five years of their government services coming from private contractor IBTS after the company won praise Tuesday evening from both Mayor Jr. Shelton and the Central City Council. IBTS, the Institute for Building Technology and Safety, has spent the past seven years running government services in Central, where the number of city government employees can be counted on one hand. The not-for-profit, Virginia-based company was one of two that bid for the contract to run services that other City Halls hire government employees to accomplish. IBTS offered its services starting at $3.9 million annually and working up to $4.4 million in the final year of a five-year contract. … One big change Shelton said Central wants from IBTS is to beef up emergency services. The August 2016 floods exposed a weak spot in Central’s privatized system of government — the lack of personnel and resources available on a round-the-clock basis to respond to disasters, he said. … CH2M Hill provided city services before IBTS took over.

New Haven Housing Authority restructuring for private investment

Source: Mary E. O’Leary, New Haven Register, January 2, 2018
 
The Housing Authority of New Haven will start issuing layoff notices on Friday as it restructures, but said there will be opportunities to seek similar jobs under a new nonprofit company it has formed.  A total of 50 people at the authority will be affected throughout 2018, according to the authority, but it plans to hire between 40 and 45 people for similar positions in a restructuring it said is needed to ensure its financial stability. … The authority already has one affiliate, the Glendower Group, which oversees its construction projects. It now has formed a second nonprofit affiliate, 360 Property Management Co., which eventually will oversee the maintenance and security of 1,300 housing units, as well as handle leasing. … DuBois-Walton said the new jobs, which are almost one for one with the current positions, will reflect private market salaries, which will be less than those negotiated by the two American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees locals representing workers. …

America’s Rural Hospitals Are Dangerously Fragile

Source: Brian Alexander, The Atlantic, January 9, 2018

… Last November, however, Circleville’s voters chose another direction, one that, in other places, has resulted in an economic hit to the community—mostly in the form of job losses and stagnant wages—as well as a lowered quality of care. At the urging of city and county leaders, and Berger’s administrators, residents voted to allow local politicians and the hospital’s board to begin a process to turn Berger, one of the last publicly owned and operated hospitals in the state, into a nonprofit private corporation. Following that, Berger would most likely be integrated into a larger regional system, probably the Columbus-based nonprofit Ohio Health, with which Berger has an ongoing relationship. …
 
… Hospitals have been struggling—especially independent public and/or nonprofit hospitals located in smaller cities and rural towns. Last year, for example, the National Rural Health Association, a nonprofit, estimated that 673 rural facilities (with a variety of ownership structures) were at risk of closure, out of over 2,000. And with the new tax legislation, and events like the merger of the drugstore chain CVS and the insurer Aetna, the turmoil looks to get worse. In response, stand-alone nonprofit hospitals have been auctioning off their real estate to investors, selling themselves to for-profit chains or private-equity firms, or, like Berger, folding themselves into regional health systems. …

San Mateo County officials, non-profits say labor bill would harm services

Source: Michael McLaughlin, Peninsula Press, November 19, 2017
 
Nonprofits and many California counties are gearing up for a possible showdown in Sacramento against the state’s service employees union over a bill that could make it harder for local governments to contract with outside organizations that provide critical services.  AB 1250, a labor bill that proposes new requirements that opponents say could make it difficult for counties to outsource services, stalled in September in the Senate Rules Committee but is eligible to be acted upon again as early as January.  The struggle to pass it pits the Service Employees International Union, a North American labor group with 1.9 million members, against nonprofits who fear their budgets will be slashed if county governments face new hurdles to work with them. …

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California Today: Battle Over a Bill Reaches the State Senate
Source: Mike McPhate, New York Times, August 24, 2017

An intense debate is being waged in Sacramento over a proposal that would alter how crucial services are provided to Californians. Sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, the measure would require that counties adhere to a raft of new conditions before contracting out for services in health care, housing, public safety and other areas. …

Editorial: California Democrats’ labor of love for unions
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 2017

A union-backed bill to pad local government payrolls has been steadily diminished by those with the clout to fend off organized labor and its numerous friends in the California Legislature. The state’s cities got a reprieve from the bill en masse. So did San Francisco, the state’s only city and county, and Santa Clara County. All that’s left for the state Senate is to finish the job and kill this misbegotten bill altogether. … The bill’s onerous conditions leave little doubt that its intent is to discourage and eliminate private contracts in favor of expanding government payrolls and union membership. It threatens to needlessly inflate public spending and disrupt a range of services, many of them routinely provided by nonprofits serving the homeless, the mentally ill and other vulnerable people. A legislative analysis found that the bill would bring about “potentially major local cost increases or service reductions” and could affect “a broad array of services.” …

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DCFS vows change to program that saw surge of child deaths

Source: David Jackson and Gary Marx, Chicago Tribune, October 25, 2017
 
Following a Tribune report on deaths of children in a privatized child welfare program, a state Department of Children and Family Services official said Tuesday that the agency has started taking back some of those cases from contract agencies and will handle them in-house.  Nora Harms-Pavelski, the agency’s deputy director of child protection, also disclosed at a legislative hearing Tuesday that agency administrators are now getting immediate reports on any instance of mistreatment of a child in the “intact family services” program, among other reforms. …

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Child deaths spike after DCFS privatizes ‘intact family services’
Source: David Jackson and Gary Marx, Chicago Tribune, October 23, 2017
 
The state Department of Children and Family Services had conducted two abuse investigations into Verna Tobicoe’s Southeast Side home in the months before her death in May 2015. The agency also had hired a nonprofit group to make frequent visits and conduct safety checks on Verna and two siblings. … And then 44-pound Verna became part of a growing pattern of similar fatalities: She was one of 15 Illinois children to die of abuse or neglect from 2012 through last year in homes receiving “intact family services” from organizations hired by DCFS, a Tribune investigation found.  There was only one such child death under the intact family services program during the previous five years from 2007 through 2011, according to DCFS records released to the Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act. … The spike in deaths began in 2012 after DCFS completely privatized the program, putting the care of families in the hands of nonprofit groups but doing little to evaluate the quality of their work, give them guidance and resources, or hold them accountable when children were hurt or put at risk, the Tribune found. …