Maryland families say disability pay cuts would push them off the care they already built

Spotlight on Maryland spent late June with families who use the state’s self-direction program and were counting on relatives as paid staff. Brooke Conrad’s June 26 story centers on Noah Weikert of Frederick, who has worked for three years at Beans & Dreams, a coffee shop that employs people with developmental disabilities. His sister is paid as his job coach.

His father, Denny Weikert, told the station the family was looking at wage cuts on July 1 and hour cuts in September, and did not want to replace relatives who know Noah with outside staff. Other families in the story described the same bind. Connor McNeil’s stepsister would no longer be a paid caretaker. Tracey Hove, raising her daughter Jenna, said she stood to lose more than $1,200 a month and would rather cut her own budget than hire strangers after bad experiences with outside workers.

Governor Wes Moore’s administration has argued the Developmental Disabilities Administration reductions are needed for a large deficit and to stay inside federal Medicaid cost-neutrality rules for the Community Pathways Waiver. A spokesperson, Ammar Moussa, told Spotlight that the deficit was not the reason the cuts were required. The station also reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it had not issued a public notice that the waiver was at risk of ending over those rules.

The piece ran days before the state postponed the July 1 start. Read it next to the later desk note: the families’ plans were real, and the postponement did not retire the policy.