National Training
Conference 2008:
San Diego, September 8-12, 2008 . . . The National Association
of Crime Victim Compensation Boards invites its membership to
join in our next National Training Conference in San Diego, September
8-12. Details have been sent to all compensation programs. You
also can check out the "members only" portion of our
site for more information. [Please note that information about
accessing our members-only pages has been sent to each compensation
program manager. The site is open to all our member state victim
compensation programs, which would include personnel working for
a state compensation agency, and to the district and county compensation
programs in Colorado and Arizona.]
The Association's
latest newsletter
has been mailed to all compensation programs. Included are articles
on our San Diego conference; the latest on the dire straits that
VOCA assistance grants are in; a new "cold-case" policy
in Denver, and authorization in Utah to begin using a medical
fee schedule; and a summary of evaluations from our 2007 National
Training Conference.
Contact
NACVCB at (703) 780-3200; e-mail nacvcb@aol.com; P.O. Box 7054,
Alexandria, VA 22307.
Crime Victim Compensation Helps
Victims . . .
- Victims of violent crime and their families received
benefits totaling $453 million in federal fiscal year 2007.
This was an increase from the $426 million paid in 2005, and
the $444 million in 2006.
- Programs paid $22.9 million for forensic sexual assault
exams, a 10% increase from 2006.
- Victims of child abuse comprised 18.5% of the recipients
of crime victim compensation.
- Domestic violence victims were 25% of all adult victims
compensated (crimes other than child abuse, drunk driving, and
international terrorism). Of all assault claims, 34% are paid
to domestic violence victims.
- Medical expenses were 51% of all payments; economic support
for lost wages for injured victims, and for lost support in
homicides, comprised 17% of the total; 11% of total payments
went for funeral bills; and 8% went toward mental health counseling
for crime victims.
Click here for a
FACT SHEET on Crime Victim Compensation. Click
here for a current
contact list of state compensation programs.
- For information about an individual state
victim compensation program, click on the Program Directory
on the menu in the upper-left-hand corner of this page.
Essential VOCA for Compensation Programs
An effort to capture in a one-page summary all
of the essential provisions relating to compensation programs
contained in the Victims of Crime Act --
Click here to see. For Word
document version, click here. (This is an Association summary,
not from the Office for Victims of Crime.)
States Face Budget Problems
State legislatures may be eyeing crime victim compensation program
funding in some states in efforts to meet substantial budget shortfalls
in the coming year. Twenty-two states have projected budget gaps
for FY 2009, including shortfalls of 15% in California, 16% in
Arizona, 11% in Florida and Rhode Island, and close to 10% in
Alabama, New York, and New Jersey.
In prior years, several compensation programs' funds have been
raided by legislatures. Reminding lawmakers that many more victims
could be seeking compensation; that mass violence is always a
threat and would require sudden greater outlays to victims; and
that some "reserve" is necessary to prevent backlogs
may be among the strategies useful in countering unwanted compensation
fund reductions.
Compensation programs have struggled to keep up
with demand in recent years, with some states facing dire fiscal
crises. Some programs that have managed to do well fiscally have
then faced having funds taken away from legislatures for other
purposes. With cuts in private insurance and on the Medicaid rolls
(a byproduct of state budget crises), an explosion in health care
costs, and an increase in the violent crime rate (after 10 years
of decline), state compensation programs continue to seek sufficient
funding to provide adequate financial assistance to victims of
child abuse, domestic violence, rape, assault, and murder.
VOCA
Budget -- FY '08 and '09
The President has signed an appropriations bill that reduced
the VOCA cap for funding in federal fiscal year 2008 to $590 million,
a cut of $35 million from last year, and the lowest level in many
years.
VOCA assistance grants to states will be down 17% from the level
of two years ago. Assistance grants will be $42 million less than
last year, which comes on top of a $25 million cut from FY 2006.
Now, the President's budget for FY 2009 calls for another $590
million cap, which when combined with some other adjustments to
VOCA spending, will result in nearly a 25% cut for VOCA assistance
funding from FY 2006 levels. In real numbers, this is almost a
$100 million drop in VOCA assistance grants to states. The Administration
also once again seeks a total rescission of amounts collected
into the Crime Victims Fund up until the present.
Compensation grants to states this fiscal year will not be affected,
and will remain at 60% of each state's payout in federal fiscal
year 2006. Compensation grants next fiscal year (federal FY 2009)
also are not expected to change..
Why are compensation grants unchanged, while VOCA assistance grants
are cut so severely? It has to do with the way VOCA's formula
works in distributing the total amount available within the VOCA
cap set by Congress. After a number of earmarks are satisfied
(principally for victim-witness staff in U.S. Attorney's and FBI
offices, and for Children's Justice Act grants), the remainder
of the VOCA cap amount is divided three ways: OVC gets 5% for
grants and projects, and then the rest is split equally between
VOCA's two major grant streams: crime victim compensation, and
victim assistance. If there's enough in that compensation set-aside
to give each compensation program a grant equal to 60% of its
state-dollar payout, then any left-over amount flows over to the
assistance side to increase those grants. This always has been
the case-money flowing from the compensation set-aside to the
VOCA assistance side-since the total of all the state's 60% grants
is far less than what is initially set aside. But if compensation
grants grow-and this also has been the case recently, as compensation
programs pay more money to victims-then less flows over to assistance.
And if the total VOCA cap is smaller, as is the situation this
year, then there is less money in the VOCA assistance set-aside
and the compensation set-aside to begin with.
.
|