A last-minute promise of federal funding allowed the Minnesota Department of Health to avoid layoffs of as many as 100 workers that it planned to announce on Thursday.
All layoff plans were suspended, even though the federal funding would only cover state workers who administer a program that provides breastfeeding and nutrition assistance to low-income mothers and children. Some state health workers who inspect nursing homes and other health care facilities also were expected to lose their jobs.
“The situation remains very fluid” because the state only received “verbal confirmation” of stopgap funding to pay the workers running its Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, said Andrea Ahneman, a state health spokeswoman. “We are assessing the reliability and impacts of that verbal commitment before we move forward with layoff notices.”
The state’s health commissioner, Dr. Brooke Cunningham, warned workers on Monday of plans to announce layoffs on Thursday and have them take effect Dec. 2. The prolonged federal government shutdown has cut off federal funding that the health department relies on to pay workers, she told them.
“It angers and frustrates me that we find ourselves here,” she wrote.
The health department had planned similar layoffs of infection prevention and foodborne safety workers earlier this year when President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to withhold federal public health grants. Most of those layoffs were similarly avoided when the state rearranged funding and joined in multistate lawsuits that temporarily preserved the grants.
WIC uses federal funding to provide breastfeeding and nutritional support to about 100,000 low-income mothers and children each year in Minnesota. The state has enough money to maintain those benefits into at least late November, and has encouraged participants to keep WIC appointments and continue using their benefits and shopping cards.
The shutdown has lasted four weeks because of a stalemate in Congress. While Republicans hold majority positions in the House and Senate, they don’t have enough votes without help from Democrats to approve a spending bill. And Democrats want the bill to restore tax credits that make individual health insurance plans more affordable.
