Romney restores $41.4m to social services budget
Governor Mitt Romney, after initially insisting that the state's psychiatric hospitals and social services providers absorb a slew of emergency budget cuts he approved last month, quietly reversed course yesterday and restored $41.4 million for 40 different programs.
He did so after hospital executives and mental health advocates said that the cuts would have forced the state's psychiatric hospitals to stop admitting new patients and would have required the state Department of Mental Health to eliminate about 170 staff positions.
The rollback of the cuts will be enough to avert such measures, which would have reduced services to the most chronically mentally ill, advocates said yesterday.
"They put all the money right back in, and we're very happy about it," said David Matteodo, spokesman for the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems, which represents private psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units in general hospitals.
In a letter to House and Senate budget leaders yesterday, the governor's top budget official, Thomas H. Trimarco, said tax collections in November exceeded projections by about $84 million, allowing Romney to restore $41.4 million, or about 10 percent of the $425 million he slashed from the state budget on Nov. 10.
At the time, Romney had said he needed to make the cuts to avert a spending crisis, which he said the Legislature had caused by dipping too deeply into reserve funds.
"I have recommended to the governor, and he has approved, that sufficient additional revenues will be available to support the $41.4 million in restored reductions," wrote Trimarco.
The letter, issued on a quiet Friday at the State House when Romney was in Miami for a meeting with Republican governors, marked a contrast with the governor's earlier stance, when his spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, had said that "any good manager" should be able to absorb the sort of cuts Romney had approved.
Trimarco, the administration and finance secretary, added that it would "be premature at this time" to restore additional funds and said that Governor-elect Deval L. Patrick would be able to consider restoring more cuts when he takes office in January. Patrick will know then whether tax collections in December continue to exceed projections, Trimarco wrote.
Among the money restored yesterday was $4 million for residential and day psychiatric programs, $2.7 million for the MassHealth program, $2.4 million for residential services for special education students, $2 million for group care services, $1.5 million for community health center grants, $1 million for rental vouchers, and $410,000 for homeless assistance.
"The governor seemed to recognize the need for this funding, and we're very pleased about that," Matteodo said.
The governor's cuts originally called for $1.9 million to be slashed from the department's funds for inpatient services, and another $1.9 from community services for mentally ill people.
In response, the department had put out the word last month that it planned to stop all admissions to state psychiatric hospitals immediately, until the patient population dwindled.
That plan went on hold in recent days, as the department negotiated with the administration's budget staff.
The administration had contended that the department should be able to cut the required 1 percent of its budget without hurting the services it provides to the mentally ill.
Yesterday, however, Revenue Commissioner Alan LeBovidge reported that tax collections in November were up across the board compared with November 2005.
"November revenues are good news, and we continue to monitor the situation closely," Felix Browne, another spokesman for Romney, said last night.
"At this time, it is possible to selectively restore funding in a few areas. However, most of the spending reductions made by the governor remain in effect."
Carey Goldberg of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Michael Levenson can be reached at levenson@globe.com. 
