Gov. Wes Moore’s 2026 budget makes deep, dangerous cuts to services for Marylanders with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD). The numbers are staggering — cutting about $235 million in state funds and forfeiting $215 million of additional federal Medicaid matching funds. Total cuts to Maryland services for our family, friends and neighbors with IDD — things like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and other disabilities — exceeds $450 million.

To put that into perspective, the budget for the whole IDD system in Maryland is about $2 billion. That puts cuts of $457 million at about 22% of the whole the system. By any standard, this cut is unprecedented and dangerous. Marylanders with IDD and their families are justifiably terrified. It’s worth exploring why.

Support for people with IDD is essential. Sometimes that support is substantial — lots of people receive residential services that include staff-provided supports 24/7 from direct support professionals (DSPs) — and others need much more episodic, intermittent support from DSPs and others that focus on particular needs such as getting a great job or accessing health care. No one person with an IDD looks like any other, so services address the particular needs and aspirations of each person.

Maryland offers services for people with IDD through two options. Community provider-based services are delivered by organizations (mostly nonprofits) that are regulated, licensed, certified and funded by the Developmental Disabilities Administration. Self-directed services are where the person with the IDD and (usually) their family hire their own DSPs and source their own therapies and ancillary supports without want or need of a provider organization. Both of these options rely on a stable, robust workforce and, critically, system capacity. At its simplest, system capacity is really all about the availability of high-quality DSPs.

There are about 21,000 Marylanders with IDD who are receiving supports that are either community provider-based or self-directed. The proposed budget cuts would eliminate 22% of system capacity, effective as early as April 1. No implementation details have been shared less than two months from implementation. No glidepath. No transition. One day the system is whole. The next day the system is shorn to 78%. Overnight.

There is no debating the inevitable result, the most devastating of which is the inevitable impact on the state’s estimated 11,000 DSPs. They are the single most critical and effective tool available to Maryland services. Since 2019, the state has steadily evolved its system to invest in the DSP workforce, and with good reason. The IDD system nationally has been in the eye of a protracted workforce crisis, exacerbated dramatically by the COVID-19 crisis. In 2019, DSP turnover in Maryland was an eye-popping 43%. By 2023, through critical investment, it had dropped to 30.5%; and, that same year, Maryland had the third-lowest DSP turnover in the United States. As our communities’ Baby Boomers reach ages at which they need personal attendants and assistants, the demand is growing exponentially, while the workforce overall is shrinking and unable to meet demands — all without proposed cuts to the marrow of the Maryland service system.

There have been no impact analyses. There has been no meaningful dialogue with stakeholders. As proposed, these cuts are effective on April 1, less than two months from now. There are no details for people with IDD and their families to begin to plan how to adjust, assuming they’ll be able to at all. There are no policy directives, no guidelines, no directive memoranda. At this writing, there have been no meetings or forums to solicit and gather input.

So, why are our friends with IDD scared? Because they face the inevitability of a deepening workforce crisis in Maryland to get the services they need to remain safe and healthy, and they have received no information or details. These services and supports are not voluntary. They’re not just a nice thing to have. People with IDD will not be inconvenienced by these cuts. It’s far more critical. These are life-sustaining services. And, the calculus is straightforward — without DSPs, there are no community services. The implications are self-evident, the consequences dire.

The state, as it seeks to explain these cuts, points to the IDD system growing dramatically in costs over the last two years. We’ve heard that last year alone, the system administered by the Developmental Disabilities Administration overspent its budget by $901 million. But, it doesn’t say why or on what the over-expenditure has occurred. At the same time, the Maryland Developmental Disabilities Coalition and representatives of both the service provider and self-directed services communities have said repeatedly and publicly that we welcome the opportunity to analyze and create system efficiencies, to modernize (desperately overdue) our regulatory environment and to match our policy priorities with where and how we expend public funds. We point to critical dynamics that can’t be ignored, such as Maryland’s ever-advancing minimum wage, the right thing to do for our workforce and others, the lagging impact of the pandemic and inflationary pressures that resulted from our response to it, and the growing demand for these services by Marylanders with developmental disabilities and their families.

We’re assured that the proposed 2026 budget is intended to, among other things, “promote program stability.” These cuts at this scale will have precisely the opposite effect, creating immediate instability, reducing system capacity and eviscerating essential, life-sustaining supports to Marylanders with IDD, placing them in grave danger.

We urge the General Assembly to reject proposed cuts outright, and instead bring system stakeholders together to critically and collaboratively review the system and recommend a course of action to move the system forward while finding efficiencies to achieve sustainability. Anything less is balancing the budget on the backs of our great state’s most vulnerable citizens.

Rick Callahan is executive director of Compass, Inc. David A. Ervin is CEO of Makom. Steve Keener is executive director of the Jubilee Association of Maryland. Karen Lee is CEO of SEEC. The organizations are Maryland nonprofits that serve individuals with disabilities.