Funding ax for Tailor Institute for autism services was 'oversight'

All the state funding for an autism institute in Cape Girardeau never should have been axed, two local lawmakers, a lobbyist and a former state senator said.

State lawmakers scrapped funding for the Tailor Institute near the end of the regular legislative session in May.

Tailor Institute officials said they were caught off guard by that action.

State Rep. Kathy Swan and state Sen. Wayne Wallingford, both Cape Girardeau Republicans, said they were surprised by the loss of funding.

Swan said she had "no idea it had been taken out" in conference committee.

Marnae Foster, an intech specialist with the St. Louis County Missouri Career Center, helps Kevin Schuller, second from right, and Seamus Dolhick with their resumes as part of the Tailor Institute's program, Project Life Experience, on Wednesday in St. Ann, Missouri.Laura Simon

Wallingford said it shocked him, too.

Both lawmakers said they learned about removal of the funding from Tailor Institute lobbyist Jerry Ford of Cape Girardeau during the last week of the regular legislative session.

"It was kind of a confusing issue," Wallingford said.

The senator said he, Swan and Department of Mental Health director Mark Stringer met May 11, the second-to-last day of the session. Wallingford said he and Swan asked Stringer to see whether his agency could find any temporary funding for the institute.

"He didn't promise anything, but he said he would take a look," Wallingford said.

Tailor Institute officials said they were unaware at that time its funding had been eliminated.

They said they learned about the loss of funding in a meeting with Swan on May 17, five days after the end of the regular session.

Carrie Tracy, director of the Tailor Institute, said the news came as a complete shock.

"No one had told me anything was even wrong," she said.

Tracy said she and other leaders of the Tailor Institute did not receive a single phone call from Swan, Wallingford or Ford during the session that warned of any funding problem, Tracy said.

"At the end of the day, it's like we are just forgotten," she said.

The institute was founded in 2003 by the late David Crowe, whose son has autism. The organization focuses on fostering vocational skills for people 16 years of age and older who have autism.

The Tailor Institute has received state funding for the past 10 years, said Jenny Goncher, former director of the institute who still helps out with the organization.

The organization has been funded through the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Goncher and Tracy said the institute has depended solely on state money to fund its workforce-development program, the organization's main focus.

Goncher said the institute also has raised money over the years placed into a discretionary fund.

Some of that money was spent on projects not covered by the state funding, she said.

The institute has about $66,000 in that fund, Goncher said.

The state had appropriated $200,000 annually for the institute. State funding comprised most of the organization's annual budget, Tracy and Goncher said.

Funding was increased last year to $450,000, but the organization never received that amount. Funding was reduced to $200,000 by Gov. Jay Nixon because of state financial woes, according to Goncher.

In this year's legislative session, the House again budgeted $450,000 for the institute, or $250,000 more than Gov. Eric Greitens had recommended.

But the funding began to unravel.

First, House budget chairman Scott Fitzpatrick moved the funding from the DED budget to the Mental Health Department budget.

Fitzpatrick's chief of staff, Chris Dunn, said his boss moved the funding to the Mental Health Department because he wanted all funding for autism to be administered by a single state agency. The Mental Health Department administered the other autism programs, he said.

Dunn said he explained the situation to Swan when the lawmaker asked him about it this week.

Swan, Wallingford, Tailor Institute officials and Ford said the Cape Girardeau program funding should not have been moved to the Mental Health budget.

They said the Tailor Institute is not a mental-health program but a workforce-development program.

Swan said she "was not fully aware" of the funding move at the time.

Swan, who serves on the House appropriations committee for mental-health and social services, said nothing came up at the hearing that funding had been moved to the Mental Health Department budget.

Former state senator Jason Crowell of Cape Girardeau said funding for the Tailor Institute was basically "dead" once the earmarked money was moved from House Bill 7, the DED budget bill, to House Bill 10, the Mental Health budget bill.

"Mental Health's mission is not workforce development," Crowell said.

The budgeting move made it easier for the Senate to ax the program, he and others said.

The House passed HB10 in early April, sending it to the Senate.

The funding was removed in the Senate appropriations committee, which passed a Senate substitute bill April 24, Swan said legislative records show.

"It was not in there. It was zeroed out," she said.

The final act played out in the House and Senate conference committee in early May. Fitzpatrick, the House budget chairman, agreed to take the Senate's position, leaving no funding in the bill for the Tailor Institute, Swan said.

Swan said she only learned of that action after reviewing the video of the conference committee meeting. Neither she nor Wallingford served on the conference committee.

Swan said she doesn't understand why the House conferees did not fight for funding for the Tailor Institute.

Wallingford said if he had been sitting on the committee, he would have objected to eliminating all funding for the institute.

According to Wallingford, it never was the Senate's intention to zero out funding.

"I don't believe the Senate intended to provide $450,000 for the Tailor Institute, but they fully intended to provide them $200,000," Wallingford said.

Wallingford, who serves on the Senate appropriations committee, said the Senate eliminated the funding with the idea the House and Senate conferees would meet in the middle.

But that did not happen.

"Apparently, it whisked right through," he said of the no-funding move.

"It just got glossed over and no one stood up and said, 'We don't want zero,'" Wallingford said.

"It wasn't intentional," he said. "It was an oversight. Unfortunately, it affected real people and programs."

But Crowell said the Tailor Institute should not have lost all its funding.

Crowell said he doesn't understand why the House lawmakers in the conference committee did not fight for funding for the Tailor Institute.

"It's crazy," he said.

Either there was a "wink-wink or nod-nod" to zero out funding for the institute or lawmakers "were grossly incompetent," he said.

Crowell said it is "terrible, terrible ... that the Tailor Institute was never given the opportunity to fight for its existence."

Ford said "the biggest problem that we had in the session was the extreme shortage of money. It was one of the worst years I have ever seen in terms of the lack of funding."

He added, "Everybody was fighting for money."

Ford said he has talked to officials with DED and Mental Health to see whether short-term funding can be found, including the possibility of a supplemental appropriation in January.

But he said such funding appears unlikely.

"Worst-case scenario, I am trying to set the stage for $200,000 to be reinstated for the 2019 budget. But that is a year away," Ford said.

Meredith Ogburn, president of the board for the Tailor Institute, said, "It is frustrating. We are stuck holding the bag."

State funding for the institute will run out June 30. Leaders of the institute said they will rely on private donations for now as they seek ways to continue operations or move their clients to other programs.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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