Local addiction agencies await needed state funding

State funds earmarked for Nassau County substance abuse programs are logjammed, and the agencies awaiting them are fending off crises at an unprecedented rate. Battling stoically against an ongoing heroine epidemic as well as a shameful spate of drunk driving fiascos, neighborhood drug counseling agencies in Baldwin, Rockville Centre, Franklin Square and other areas are still awaiting a “January advance” they say the county has received but has yet to distribute.

The January advance funds are apportioned by the state to provide nonprofit agencies operating funds until reimbursements filed for in the preceding year kick in. Because such agencies are required to provide care for everyone who shows up at their doors, these funds are necessary for their basic operations.

Sal LaFemina, executive director of Community Counseling Services of West Nassau, at 1200 Hempstead Tpke. in Franklin Square, said the delay in funds has put the agency in a precarious situation for the next two years. LaFemina said Community Counseling Services of West Nassau is close to borrowing the entirety of its $75,000 credit line with Capital One Bank — something it had to do last year, due to the county’s lag in handing funding over to substance abuse agencies.

With a nearly 8 percent interest on its credit line, the agency is going further and further into debt, and the county won’t reimburse agencies for what they spend on unnecessary interest — money that could’ve gone to equipment, salaries and programs — LaFemina said.

“I’ll use our credit line until it’s exhausted, and if it comes down to it, I’ll hold off on certain bills,” LaFemina said, adding that he is most concerned about affording payroll, which is the agency’s biggest expense. At the end of February, he said he had to borrow nearly $15,000 just to make payroll. The agency might have to hold off on paying salaries in March, he added.

Last January, the agency had to cancel employees’ health insurance because it couldn’t afford to pay for both health insurance and salaries, and employees were without health insurance for 30 days.

LaFemina said the county has always taken its time with dispersing state funding to local agencies — in only three of the past 20 years, Nassau County has delivered the funding in a timely fashion — and he is unsure why.

“I think most staff who work in this industry would work without a paycheck; they aren’t here for the money. Most social workers and drug counselors are going to continue to provide services, and maybe the county takes advantage of that,” LaFemina said. “It’s hard to know what’s really going on.”

Last year, Community Counseling Services received state funding from the county in late March — more than two months after it was supposed to arrive, he said. The county receives the money from the state in late November, he added.

Jostyn Hernandez, a spokesman for County Comptroller George Maragos, said the delay in funding is due to the county’s review process, and agencies’ delay in actually filing contracts with the county.

“There is a process with all of these contracts, they go through different departments and when it gets to us in the comptroller’s office, we do a thorough review to make sure that they are providing the services that they state,” Hernandez said. The job of the comptroller, once the contracts have been received, Hernandez said, is to ensure that the service agencies have accounted for the use of at least 80 percent of the year’s advance through a reconciliation process. He added that to date, the comptroller has received only 20 of 132 agency contracts that will need reconciliation.

Maragos said he is sensitive to the needs of local substance abuse agencies. “The comptroller’s office will be expediting all claims received to assist the organizations and the important work they perform,” Maragos said.

Unfortunately, local agencies are too small to float funds out of financial reserves, and are hard-pressed to meet costs without advance funding.

LaFemina said he filed Community Counseling Services’ contract in December. He also said that when he worked for Family Consultation Services, in Suffolk County — a position he held for nearly 20 years — he never experienced funding issues like Nassau County’s. And if agencies in Suffolk County were held over, they could go to the county and usually get some money to hold them over, he said.

Art Rosenthal, executive director of the Confide Drug and Alcohol Counseling Center in Rockville Centre, said he and his colleagues have heard from “reliable sources” that the county received the advance money from the state, but due to “an impossible number of unpredictables … within the county’s departments,” the payments have thus far been delayed. “We hear it’s in the comptroller’s office,” Rosenthal said. “It’s in the county. There is a multi-step process where the contracts have to be read and signed and the legalese has to be evaluated.”

Rosenthal and LaFemina recently met with several other local substance abuse center administrators about the funding delay. At the meeting, Claudia Rotondo, executive director of the Baldwin Council Against Drug Abuse, produced a list of January advance arrival dates and a stack of letters she has written to every county executive since 2000 to complain about the delays. Rotondo said that since 1995, only three January advances have actually been delivered in the month for which they were named, and several have not arrived until late March.

LaFemina said if he doesn’t receive funding by the end of March, the agency will have serious problems operating. “We are expected to provide treatment to these people. A lot of clients are in need of services,” he said. “God forbid we’d have to close our doors.”

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