Topeka — As the dust settles on the legislative maneuvering of the chaotic 2024 session, disability rights advocates applaud a budget provision meant to shorten wait times for disabled Kansans who need services.

Lawmakers overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto to implement a provision that puts caps on the wait times for Kansans who want to receive state-funded disability services. Included in the state budget, the provision would forbid the waiting lists from exceeding 6,800 people during the fiscal year that begins in July.

Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, said the change is “incredibly positive.”

“It tells me the Legislature takes a waiting list seriously,” Nichols said. “This is going to have a huge impact. Hats off and I really want to commend the Legislature for coming up with these provisos, because it’s a very innovative way to ensure that you’re actually going to reduce the waiting list. You set a cap.”

The latest data shows 7,698 Kansans currently waiting for services, with 5,342 people on the intellectual and developmental disabilities waitlist and 2,356 people on the physical disability waitlist.

The Legislature set aside $45.8 million, available for fiscal year 2025, to fund services for 1,000 Kansans who are currently on the state’s waiting lists, divided evenly between people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and those with physical disabilities.

If enrollment trends continue along the same lines as last year, when 561 new people enrolled in the intellectual disability waitlist, the proposed new funding would not be enough to lessen the waitlist on its own.

During the veto override debate Monday, Sen. Rick Billinger, a Goodland Republican, said lawmakers couldn’t “continue to kick this down the road.”

“Folks, we put $38 million into a soccer tournament,” Billinger said. “If we can’t put dollars in here for the IDD and the PD, we better refocus. And I believe that this is a step to try to get us to do better, because we must do better. We’re failing this community.”

The law requires KDADS by January to provide the Legislature with an estimate on the costs of keeping this cap in place. The Legislature will have to pass a supplemental funding bill to cover the costs of keeping the lists below the caps of 4,800 for the IDD waitlist and 2,000 for the PD waitlist.

The waitlists have been a long-intensifying problem. Kansans with intellectual or developmental disabilities are eligible for Medicaid-funded support waivers that cover a variety of needed services. People who want to receive this assistance are placed on a waiting list supervised by KDADS.

But wait times can last more than 10 years, and more and more Kansans have been added to the slow-moving lists.

“The veto override works to ensure 500 new Kansans with intellectual and developmental disabilities are eliminated from our historic, record-high IDD waitlist, and will start receiving essential HCBS waiver services,” said Sara Hart Weir, executive director of the Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities. “Moreover, this veto override caps the IDD waitlist in Kansas at 4,800, which is another long-term step toward eliminating our IDD waitlist in the Sunflower State.”

Kelly said she supported finding a solution to the wait times. But she vetoed the caps because of concerns about capacity if they were implemented.

“By instituting a cap on the number on the waitlists, the agency will be unable to maintain reserve capacity intended for specialty populations such as children coming into DCF custody, Home and Community Based Service,” Kelly said in a veto explanation. “… In addition, continually adding slots to these waivers haphazardly or thoughtlessly capping the waitlist number will not be sufficient or sustainable unless provider capacity is also addressed.”

The Senate voted 28-12 and the House 116-9 to override the veto.

“I’m not concerned about creating new problems. The problems continue to be there,” said Sen. Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg. “And they continue to be ignored by the agency. I support this veto override effort. And I urge the governor to have her secretary get the work done that needs to be done so that we as a legislature can clearly address the needs of the kids that are on the waitlist.”

— Rachel Mipro reports for Kansas Reflector.