Thanks to the Legislature for considering fully funding direct care workers – who support people with disabilities – to earn at least 125 percent of the minimum wage, and thank you to the governor for accelerating direct care worker cost-of-living adjustments. But these efforts are manifestly inadequate to compete in the labor market against Walmart and similar employers.

In the supplemental budget, the Legislature should immediately raise direct care workers’ pay to at least $20 per hour, with further increases indexed to minimum-wage hikes. One-time incentive payments are not enough!

In addition, waitlists for home- and community-based services for people with disabilities have grown and grown and grown – and will keep growing under the current supplemental budget proposal. The Legislature should capitalize a waitlist elimination fund to carry dollars into future fiscal years to finally address the appalling waitlists as the workforce crisis is eased by increased direct care worker wages.

Alan Cobo-Lewis
Orono