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Florida’s Agency for Persons with Disabilities, despite consistently going over budget the past few years and facing a $120 million cut from the previous fiscal year, will remain within appropriations set out by the Legislature this year, its top financial director said Monday.

“You gave us enough, and that’s the plan. Starting July 1, we’ll be starting on our zero-year deficit,” APD chief of financial services Charles Ball told legislative aides Monday during a meeting with state economists attempting to project the agency‘s actual costs.

The agency needed a $174 million bailout from Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature in mid-April to fund itself through the rest of the fiscal year, which ended June 30.

Before the bailout, Scott issued an executive order at the beginning of April cutting payments to APD service providers by 15 percent to prevent the agency from running out of funds in May. Scott rescinded the order in mid-April after reaching a deal with the Legislature to fund APD and impose future restrictions. Provider rates then returned to normal.

But that doesn’t mean providers who billed APD for services for the first half of April will be reimbursed for the temporary cut.

“Services provided in the first 15 days in April were paid at the reduced rate,” Ball said.

Legislators gave the agency $810 million in state and federal funds for the current fiscal year, $120 million less than last year. The agency will submit a cost-cutting plan to lawmakers by Sept. 1.

Cost savings in the form of a 4 percent rate reduction to service providers will help the agency, but APD must still make $90 million in cuts to meet its budget. Medicaid waiver program costs that serve 30,000 people under the agency have already been frozen, and the recipients will be shifted into an “iBudget” program later this year that gives them a stipend to use for their health-care needs.

“The agency is implementing a series of cost-cutting or cost-reducing exercises,” Ball said, but declined to name specifics until the final report to lawmakers is released.

Although the agency’s plan for cutting costs isn’t out yet, legislative budget analysts are hopeful current cuts and costs freezes will help APD stabilize spending for the next two or three years.

“In the absence of substantial policy changes or service limitations, I don’t see (costs) getting substantially different,” said Eric Pridgeon, staff director for the House Health Care Appropriations Committee.

The state taxpayers’ share of APD’s $810 million appropriation is $358 million (44 percent), with the rest paid by federal funds. Projections of state APD expenditures will be adjusted, however, because initial estimates relied on the previous four years, when federal stimulus dollars skewed the state funding proportion.

For the previous two years, when the stimulus funds beefed up the state’s budget, the Florida taxpayer share of the APD budget was significantly less. Last year, the APD was funded at $806 million, and the state’s share of the budget was 35 percent. In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the state’s portion was 32 percent.

Federal stimulus funds dried up this year, leaving the state to fund a larger share of the agency’s budget.

Reach Gray Rohrer at sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.