Six sheltered workshops recently filed a lawsuit challenging the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s recent decision to pay people with developmental disabilities $15 a day instead of $17 a day.

The six workshops are Central Missouri Subcontracting Enterprises, Columbia; Valley Industries, Hazelwood; Harrison County Sheltered Workshop Association, Bethany; Lake Area Industries Inc., Camdenton; Sheltered Industries of the Meramec Valley Inc., Sullivan; and Vocational Services Inc., Liberty.

The workshops, members of the Missouri Association of Sheltered Workshop Managers, filed a lawsuit last month requesting that the Department of Education fund workshops at the level designated by state law, which was passed by a vote of the legislature in last year’s session.

A letter from the two legislative finance chairmen of the house and senate directed the department to fund at last year’s, $15 per diem.

Missouri’s sheltered workshops derive most of their income from contract labor for business services such as packaging, original products and services. The state funds provide a key support to help workshops provide supervision and training for their workers with developmental disabilities while remaining competitive with their business services.

“We understand the legislature has to balance the budget, but this is not about the amount of funds appropriated,” said Randy Hylton, executive director of Vocational Services Inc., in a release. “We are concerned that most legislators don’t realize that state statutes were being overridden without their vote. A lot of legislators may not know this, but it’s fiscally very serious for workshops that have only had one increase in 10 years.”