With our center-based services closed and many of our community-based services significantly reduced, we are doing our best to keep people safe. However, this also means lost revenue for our organization even though we still have expenses.

You may have seen the Pioneer Press article, stressing the importance of reallocating funding to help day programs like ours weather COVID-19. About 80 percent of the services are reimbursed from state and federal coffers. 

“Without any funding, we don’t get paid when people aren’t there,” said Julie Johnson, president of the Minnesota Organization for Habilitation and Rehabilitation. “This could be devastating for the industry if they (legislators) don’t stand up and pay attention to it. If we wait too long, we’ll lose providers. People will lose options and opportunities.”

Your help is crucial. We are asking Minnesota to do what so many other states are already doing: provide partial payments to providers for reduced attendance and closures. These partial payments will cover our fixed costs to keep our organization and so many others in the disability services system afloat. Without these payments, there will be lasting impacts on disability services, which will reduce choice and inclusion for some of the most vulnerable people in our community. 

Below we’ve included a sample email that you can use to contact your legislators. Don’t know who to contact? Click here find out who represents you and their email addresses.

Feel free to personalize the below email with your own story about how COVID-19 is impacting your life and why our services are important to you.

Here’s the message for legislators:

Dear Rep XXX/ Sen XXX,

We know the COVID-19 pandemic is presenting us all with unprecedented challenges and hardships. MSS is no different – this is a challenging time for our organization. With our center-based services closed and many of our community-based services significantly reduced, we are doing our best to keep people safe. But this also means lost revenue for our organization even though we still have expenses. Unlike schools which receive pay for closures (like snow days), MSS does not receive any funding for closures.

Emergency funding is urgently needed to help day and employment service providers pay for the fixed costs they have until it is safe to resume services fully. We are looking to our state legislative leaders like you, to ensure emergency funds are directed to disability day and employment service providers now. We cannot come back from this crisis with a decimated infrastructure for these crucial disability community services, where people with disabilities will not have access to innovative, individualized supports during the day.

I am asking you to please push to pass the Disability Day and Employment Services Fixed Cost Relief legislative proposal as soon as possible. For a copy of this legislative proposal, please contact any of the below leaders of MOHR (the statewide association of disability day and employment service providers).

Julie Johnson, MOHR President: jjohnson@mssmn.org

Lynn Noren, MOHR Government Affairs Committee Chair: lnoren@rise.org

Kevin Goodno, MOHR Government Relations Support: KGoodno@fredlaw.com

Anni Simons, MOHR Government Relations Support: asimons@fredlaw.com