Separate and Unequal – New Mexico Runs Two Tier System for DD Waiver Caregivers
The Los Lunas Community Program, a division of the State’s Department of Health, pays workers who care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities between $4,000 to $8,000 more a year than programs squeezed by Health Care Authority deflated rates.
People with disabilities, “are entitled to equal rights and to equally effective access to the same opportunities as are afforded to other members of society.” – Quoted passage from Disability Rights New Mexico (DRNM) Mission Statement.
“We are dedicated to supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities through a wide range of programs, services, and supports that promote independence, inclusion, and quality of life.” – Quoted passage from the website of the New Mexico Developmental Disabilities Supports Division (DDSD).
Those two passages reflect, 1.) a declaration of basic rights to opportunity and protection, and 2.) a promise to provide for opportunities and protection, of New Mexican residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
But the second passage’s claim belies hidden, systemic, and historic discrimination in the delivery of care to many intellectually and developmentally disabled New Mexicans.
More specifically, the New Mexico Developmental Disabilities Supports Division (DDSD) and its parent agency the Health Care Authority (HCA), continue to engage in a practice of artificially deflating the real fair compensation costs necessary to create the workforce that provides services and protections of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“Our employees are our most important resource … “
How many times have you heard that phrase from the head of an organization or their communications specialists?
Well, for intellectually and developmentally disabled New Mexicans, employees who work as direct care providers are indeed extremely important.
They are the “boots on the ground” or “front-line” workers who provide direct support to clients of the Development Disabilities Supports Division (DDSD).
These direct care givers help clients with various tasks and activities crucial in ensuring these individuals receive the necessary assistance to live independently and participate in their communities.
However, and despite the critical role they play in delivering the “wide range of programs, services, and supports that promote independence, inclusion, and quality of life” for the disabled community, these workers are paid poorly through a system devised by state agencies.
Developmental Disabilities Supports Division and Health Care Authority Knowingly Created a System That Pays Many Direct Care Givers More Poorly Than Others.
Most of these employees work for provider agencies, which are non-profit entities and companies.
These entities are paid through a rate structure engineered by the Developmental Disabilities Supports Division (DDSD) and the Health Care Authority (HCA).
The HCA and DDSD spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every few years hiring consultants to recommend rates to pay provider agencies for the care of the DDSD clients,
The rates HCA and DDSD adopt, drive the amount of hourly wages of direct care givers who work at the provider agencies, with one exception – the Los Lunas Community Program.
The Los Lunas Community Program is a provider agency that is run by a state agency.
The twenty plus supported living houses that Los Lunas Community Program operates, provide the same types of services offered by the other provider agencies operating under the rates established by DDSD and HCA.
However, as it is a division of the New Mexico Department of Health, its direct care givers are paid substantially more per hour because they are state employees, and they are covered by a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by a union.
The Los Lunas Community Program employees make from about $4,000 to $8,000 more per year than the employees doing the same work at the other provider agencies, where salaries are limited by the rates devised by DDSD and HCA.
Furthermore, state employee benefit and retirement packages offered to Los Lunas Community Program employees are significantly better than those offered, if offered at all, to the direct care givers who get paid through the engineered to be low rates HCA and DDSD approves for the other provider agencies.
And whenever the state provides a raise to state and school employees (as with the 4% increase scheduled for July 1, 2025), the Los Lunas Community Program employees get that same raise.
Not so for the direct care employees employed at the other provider agencies that are limited by the DDSD and HCA rate structure.
How DDSD and HCA Created the Separate and Unequal Pay Systems.
The Lujan Grisham Administration rationalizes the low-pay of provider agency direct service workers through a rigged system that is propped up by a so-called “rate study.”
The state leaders put together requests for proposals for a supposedly independent third party to conduct a rate study (as they did in fiscal year 2023) – with the following caveat: the consultants get their marching orders, or scope of work, directly from and essentially controlled by HCA and DDSD leadership.
The consultants are supposed to check out comparable or “market driven” salary and benefit costs from a group of localities and similarly developed programs.
But the real-time, and higher, hourly wages paid to state employees that work at the Los Lunas Community Program, have been traditionally and conveniently ignored by DDSD and HCA as a real-time market wage.
(It’s important to note that even the Los Lunas Community Program employees are not highly paid, considering the importance of their work – for example a newly hired “Direct Care I” employee makes $16.37/hour, and “Direct Care II” employees with additional years service make up to $22/hour, as listed in the May 1, 2025 New Mexico Organizational Listing Report.)
Governor Lujan Grisham’s Secretaries of the Health Care Authority and the Department of Workforce Solutions Turned a Blind Eye to Misclassification of Employees
Additionally, the 2023 rate study recommendations included a scheme that encouraged some providers to misclassify the direct care employees as independent contractors.
That “independent contractor” scheme denied many workers overtime pay rates, and also drove down the calculation of employee costs that the consultant worked up for the rate study – artificially reducing real costs.
The misclassification scheme also left those employees without workers compensation protections and exposed them to some costs for which they were generally unaware.
Despite being appraised of the illegality of the misclassification of employees, the top workforce leader in the Lujan Grisham administration chose to ignore the practice enabled by the apparent acquiescence of the top two health care leaders (click here for earlier reporting by The Candle – Handsomely Paid NM Health and Labor Secretaries Turn Blind Eye and Enable Financial Abuse of Direct Care Workers).
The misclassification scheme was challenged in a federal court action by workers of one provider agency – Quality Life Services, LLC, located in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The owners argued that the state of New Mexico’s agencies that established the rates, were aware of and essentially encouraged the classification of their employees as independent contractors.
They pointed to DDSD management employee Angie Brooks as having knowledge of the practice of classifying these direct service employees as independent contractors.
In October of 2023, a Quality Life attorney wrote in an email to Department of Health attorney Chris Woodward that, “My clients are being sued for allegedly misclassifying their DSPs as independent contractors rather than employees. Quality Life Services’ owners, April Licon and Sally Chavez, have spoken to Angie Brooks regarding the same. It is my understanding that Ms. Brooks has knowledge regarding the DD Waiver provider agency landscape and, specifically, knows that most agencies classify their DSPs as independent contractors rather than employees.”
Quality Life settled with its employees, paying more than $1 million.
Other provider agencies feel state officials misled them and have exposed them to millions of dollars in claims that have yet to be officially filed.
Repps D. Stanford, the attorney who assisted Quality Life in settling the lawsuit, stated at meeting of the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee last year, that “… plaintiffs’ attorneys are now not only suing my client, but I think it’s safe to say that they’re going to be suing almost every organization that currently has individuals that are in an independent contractor capacity.”
According to records The Candle received through an Inspection of Public Records Act request made late last summer, there were more than 2,000 employees being paid as independent contractors.
Since the damages experienced by Quality Life, The Candle has been informed that several other provider agencies that had misclassified their employees as independent contractors have take action to classify the workers as employees.
The State needs to end its practice of artificially deflating the real and fair compensation costs necessary to build the workforce that provides services and protections of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Two Stories From The Candle Regarding The New Mexico Legislature Voting to Increase Rates to Enable a Raise for Underpaid Direct Care Givers (Click on Headlines Below):
New Mexico Legislative Health Committee Wants Answers to HCA Failure to Seek Rate Increase for Developmentally Disability Workers Pay Raises
Underpaid Disability Workers Won’t Get Critical Raise, As HCA Officials Ignore Rate Increase Approved by Legislature
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