AUGUSTA – Health and Human Services Commissioner Brenda Harvey presented more details of her departmental budget for fiscal year 2008-2009 in testimony before the Legislature’s Health and Human Services and Appropriations committees on Wednesday afternoon.

Budget items included funding for child welfare services, foster care, Head Start and the Fund for a Healthy Maine, among others.

The committees also took public comment on a number of issues.

Several people, including child care provider Penny Theriault of Princeton, spoke to proposed changes in child care funding that would make it harder for some families to place their children in a quality day care program.

Theriault said many of the children she cares for come from single-parent homes, are being raised by grandparents, are in state custody or have special educational needs.

She urged lawmakers to protect a special child care voucher program for low-income families that is slated for discontinuation.

Theriault also told the committee members that the department’s dysfunctional Medicaid billing system was so delinquent in making payments to her that she was forced to sell a diamond ring to stay in business.

The two-year-old billing system, which has wreaked bookkeeping havoc among thousands of Medicaid service providers, has cost the state tens of millions of dollars and is still not working right.

On Thursday, Harvey is expected to update the committees on the status of the billing system, including a proposal to scrap efforts to fix it and instead contract with a private company to handle the complex billing and record keeping functions.

Also on Wednesday, Steve Hoad, representing the consumer group Advocacy Initiative Network of Maine, said the Legislature should proceed with proposed changes in mental health case management, but not without first assuring the integrity of the state’s network of Assertive Community Treatment teams.

Local ACT teams work closely with mentally ill individuals trying to live independently and have been successful in keeping them compliant with medications and other self-care needs.

Carol Kelly of Friends of the Fund for a Healthy Maine urged legislators to maintain the fund’s public health focus despite economic pressure to direct its resources to other projects.

A spokeswoman from the Sweetser family services organization based in southern Maine said changes in state policy have forced it to discontinue some programs, put six children’s group homes on the market and lay off 100 staff.

Her biggest concern, she said, is that she doesn’t know where the special-needs children from the residential program have been moved to, despite the state’s new focus on reuniting children with their families when possible.