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Oklahoma DHS Requests $2.5B Budget

KWGS News

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services told lawmakers Wednesday it needs a $2.5 billion budget next year.

The 4 percent increase would come largely from state appropriations to DHS climbing from $684 million to $749 million.

"This is sort of the sum total of, really, not necessarily advancing the cause. It’s sort of getting us back to where we were once upon a time not too long ago," said DHS Director Ed Lake.

State budget crises have led to things like reduced assistance for disabled adults and the elderly to get home care, and a net loss of 800 positions. The agency’s priorities are undoing cuts it had to make to critical services and keeping up with child welfare reforms.

DHS has spending targets to continue hitting in its fifth year of the child welfare reforms laid out in the Pinnacle Plan.

"It’s been a huge investment between what you have done and what we have done to get us to where we are in child welfare, and we still have a ways to go. But we have made progress, because we’ve all worked really hard to put resources behind it," Lake said.

Included in the DHS request is child welfare specialist pay raises and restoring adoption and foster care assistance cut amid state budget shortfalls.

DHS plans to put $4 million toward restoring developmental disabilities services provider rates cut in 2016.

"The people that they rely on for the really core services provided to individuals and families are the very people who can go to 7-Eleven and get $2 more an hour there," Lake said. "So, that’s who they’re competing against, and I think it’s worth our attention."

DHS said they saw a 7 percent drop in people served when the rate was cut.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.