BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The governor's office says Alabama's total mental-health funding decreased by 4.5 percent from 2009 to 2012 when counting all appropriations.
A 2011 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness showed Alabama cut its general fund mental health budget by 36 percent in those years -- the second-largest reduction in the U.S. -- from $100.3 million to $64.2 million. State assistant finance director Bill Newton said today the report, which was the subject of an AL.com story on Monday,?is flawed without counting earmarked funds.
Alabama's mental health funding for fiscal year 2009 was $366.2 million and decreased to $349.6 million by fiscal year 2012, Newton said.
"We earmark extremely more state revenue than other states," he said. "All states earmark some portion of revenue. We are by far the most. This report by this national outfit only looked at our general fund appropriation, not the total state appropriation."
Ron Honberg, national director of policy and legal affairs for NAMI, said every state confirmed its funding numbers before they were published. He could not recall who NAMI spoke with from Alabama.
"Is it possible there were certain categories of funding that we didn't have access to? It's possible," Honberg said. "But the point is we looked at major sources of funding for mental health, our methodology was consistent over the years looking at that data, and the data was confirmed. We have a small staff here. We spent hours and hours and hours in each state poring over budget documents."
NAMI's first report about mental-health funding came after the 2011 Arizona shooting that killed six people and injured.
"We felt there was a really important story that wasn't being told," Honberg said.
Source: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/12/governors_office_alabamas_tota.html
Resident Evil 6 arnold schwarzenegger pirate bay revenge revenge once upon a time once upon a time
No comments:
Post a Comment