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Disability Rights New Jersey is used to struggling to get the federal funding it relies on. The organization, one of the country’s 57 Protection and Advocacy Systems, or P&As, that provide legal advocacy for people with disabilities by investigating abuse and neglect and pursuing litigation on their behalf, can wait up to a month or two to get money after Congress approves a budget, particularly when it’s a stopgap measure known as a continuing resolution (CR) that extends funding from the previous year. But it always comes through, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is in touch along the way. “We never worried that once the CR happened that we would get the money,” said Executive Director Gwen Orlowski.
This year has been different. In March, Congress passed a CR for the rest of the fiscal year that ends in September, funding SAMHSA at the same level as the prior year. But Disability Rights New Jersey didn’t get any of the grant it relies on in March or April; more worryingly, there was zero communication about what was going on. There was “a real concern about whether or not we were going to actually get the fullness of the money,” Orlowski said, especially when President Trump’s leaked budget called for huge cuts to HHS.
Orlowski made some “hard decisions” and laid off three staff members on May 1, on top of six attorneys who had left on their own. With fewer attorneys, the organization has had to change how it does intake: Instead of doing it over the phone five days a week, seven hours a day, it’s shrunk to five hours three days a week, with a fourth manned by interns. If someone calls outside of those hours, their voicemail gets deleted. Those callers used to be offered robust advice; now they’re given some phone numbers for other organizations.
The organization was even thinking about having to shutter entirely. “I don’t believe anybody has had to think about winding it down before,” Orlowski said.
On May 2, Disability Rights New Jersey received some of the money, but it was 30 percent less than what was allotted by Congress back in March. P&As across the country experienced the same thing, said Eric Buehlmann, deputy executive director for public policy at the National Disability Rights Network. Only giving out part of the money has “never been done before,” he said. So it led to a lot of “uncertainty that starts to make you question whether the funds will actually arrive or not.”
Disability Rights New Jersey received another tranche of money on June 17, but it was still $100,000 short of the full amount due. (SAMHSA did not respond to a request for comment.) Meanwhile, Trump released a proposed budget for fiscal year 2026, which starts October 1, with a more than $1 billion cut to SAMHSA funding. And HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has essentially dissolved SAMHSA, combining it with a bunch of other agencies into the new Administration for a Healthy America.
The lack of funding, plus the uncertainty about the future, means Disability Rights New Jersey essentially hasn’t taken on any new clients or work since May. That’s been the pattern across the country, Buehlmann said: The lack of full funding, plus fear about the future, has pushed P&As to take on less work and offer less help.
Disability Rights New Jersey typically offers legal representation to people in special education, receiving personal care through Medicaid, in nursing homes, or under guardianship. “What we hear from people all the time is ‘But these systems are just too complicated, I need an attorney with me,’” Orlowski said. “‘You’re going to give me a lot of advice … but what I really need is an attorney,’ and they’re right. [But] that’s the first thing that goes when we have to pull back.” |
