ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are breathing a sigh of relief in Maryland.
On Thursday, state lawmakers announced that $76 million has been restored to the Developmental Disabilities Administration.
That money was marked to be cut in April as the state grapples with its budget deficit.
Makom has spent the last 42 years in Rockville helping adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) live fuller lives.
Important work that CEO David Ervin says mostly relies on funding from the state’s Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA).
“About 67%, I believe at last look, of our funding for supports for Marylanders with intellectual and developmental disabilities actually comes from the DDA,” he said.
However, when Gov. Wes Moore proposed slashing $200 million from the state agency’s budget to help offset Maryland’s $3 billion budget deficit, Ervin says he was greatly concerned for Makom’s ability to care for the 250 people that rely on him for services.
“It would dramatically reduce our ability, not only to currently support, but any kind of growth for services and support would be locked down as a practical matter,” he admitted. “Here at Makom, the aggregated total of the cuts would have been around $7 million. Our budget is $35 million, so that’s a 20% cut.”
Ervin says he started looking at where those cuts could happen from in his organization, trying his best to avoid a scenario that would risk letting his employees go.
“About 80% of our costs are in personnel because we’re a service industry,” Ervin said. “We hire direct support professionals (DSP), provide an enormous amount of training, really lean into getting them to walk alongside, literally and figuratively, people with IDD as they pursue a higher quality of life. Without our DSP workforce, we don’t exist.”
The cuts were marked to begin in April, affecting services.
However, on Thursday, a joint statement from the State Legislature and Governor’s office stated, “Working together to solve a significant funding gap, the Senate and House Chairs agreed to reprioritize $32 million, and the Moore-Miller administration agreed to reprioritize $44 million in critical funding to support DDA provider services and self-directed services.”
The statement went on to say the combined $76 million restores 94% of the DDA’s budget for fiscal year 2025.
However, although this year’s DDA budget is mostly secured, Ervin says he can’t celebrate for too long.
“It is an enormous relief for the current [fiscal] year. Looming right behind it is 2026,” Ervin points out. “There remains $457 million dollars in cuts to the DDA budget for [fiscal year] 2026, so our work, in many ways, is just getting started.”
The state’s budget troubles isn’t Ervin’s only concern.
He says if the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, and changes to how Medicaid pays for services like his go through, that would exacerbate funding issues for the state agency and his organization.
Yet after seeing what’s happening at the state level to preserve DDA funding, Ervin is remaining optimistic ─ at least for now.
“I am hopeful, given what we’ve seen over the last three weeks,” Ervin said. “We’re all working 24/7, as you can imagine.”
