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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | May 21, 2018 11:04 AM |
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| From: | Representative Gene DiGirolamo |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | PA Placement Criteria for Drug and Alcohol |
| Last week, I sent out an email (which is attached) raising my concerns about changes in placement criteria proposed by the Department of Drug & Alcohol Programs that will interfere with access to addiction treatment in all of our districts. As discussed in the email, the changes in placement criteria proposed by the Department are entirely unnecessary, very expensive and quite disruptive to our prevention and treatment system that is working hard to handle the demands of Pennsylvania’s families caught up in the middle of our state’s worst drug epidemic. The initial cost of implementing this proposal is estimated at $4 million with much of that cost shifted down to the local level. This is an unfunded mandate. Plain and simple. The proposal will require the retraining of 6,000 to 8,000 people who are already trained in and using the Pennsylvania Client Placement Criteria which is state-specific, state-developed and state-tested. The Department itself concedes that the new placement tool will create service gaps and definitional problems. To handle this self-inflicted problem, the Department is now producing “guidance documents” to make the alternative criteria workable in the state of Pennsylvania. Let me restate this point. The Department is developing “guidance documents” to translate the criteria into the specifics of Pennsylvania and to make it useable here. This is baffling to me. I don’t understand why we don’t use what we already have in place. My proposed bill will require the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs to continue to use the Pennsylvania Client Placement Criteria, which was established, developed and maintained in direct response to a vote of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. That vote was unanimous. (Act 152 of 1988) It is never too late to stop a wasteful government practice. Please join me in co-sponsoring this legislation. |
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