HomeMy WebLinkAbout981594.tiff STATE OF COLORADO
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COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES
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OFFICE OF OPERATIONS ? r`l f t: ' 0 NQ/ \ ,
Patrick Horton,Manager 4
1575 Sherman Street 1998 AUG 10 VI 10: 09 #v\
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Denver,Colorado 80203-1714
Phone(303)866-2423
TOO(303)866-6293 Roy Romer
FAX(303)866-4214 Governor
Barbara McDonnell
Executive Director
Karen Beye
Managing Director
August 6, 1998
Judy A. Griego
Director
Weld County Department
Of Social Services
PO Box A
Greeley, CO 80631
Dear Judy:
I am responding to your letter of July 7th in which you requested information relative to three fiscal
issues. I apologize for not having responded to your earlier, but as I mentioned to you on the
telephone, we have been intensively involved in closing the books for the Department and have
not been able to research answers to your questions. I can now respond to two of the issues that
you raised and I can give you the status of the third issue. In relation to the block grant
allocations, we have completed the fourth quarter's data reports and have distributed those
reports to the county departments. We will be doing further analysis on the pattern of
expenditures for all of block grants to determine if there are any major issues that need to be
brought to the various allocations committees that have now been established. As you well know,
the formulas for allocating funds in each of the block grants are mostly set for FY 99 and
adjusting them will mean redistributing existing allocations between counties. There will be
issues to address in taking such action, but that may be necessary. We hope to have analysis
completed and major issues identified within the next three weeks or so.
The issue of allocating support staff time to programs that are contracted outside of the
Department is one that has been identified in other counties and one that the Department has
recently discussed with our cost allocation contractor, David M. Griffith and Associates, as well as
with the Federal Government. We need to gather some information prior to negotiating an
approach with the Federal Government on this issue. Tom Allen will be calling those counties
that have identified the contractor situation as a problem, including Weld County. We need to
have an idea about the kinds of costs that you are incurring in relation to administering the
contract and the extent of those costs. It would be helpful if your staff could begin to put this data
together and have it available when Tom calls. It will help expedite a solution. Surveying
people who do not work for the county department does not appear to be a valid approach in the
cost allocation formula. We may have to do some kind of separate time study with county staff
who perform support work related to the contract, or have those staff complete time sheets. The
first step will be to acquire information from your county about the effort it takes to administer the
contract. We will then meet with the Federal Government to establish a method to allocate these
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costs. The Federal staff that I have talked with do feel that there should be a way to address the
issue and will work with us on doing so.
The collection of the RMS samples from county staff is now being done by a contractor, under
supervision of CDHS. Deb Lower from David M. Griffith and Associates, has informed me that
they have sent out staff listings to counties and have requested county departments to update the
names and to note the work hours of staff who do not work the normal 8:00AMto 5:00 PM shift.
They received no responses from counties that the names or the hours should be different. If you
have staff that work varied hours and you only want them sampled at specific times, you need to
prepare a list of names with the hours that the staff work and send that to David M. Griffith and
Associates. Griffith and Associates should make the changes on their calling schedule to
• accommodate the staff hours. Your RMS coordinator should be aware of this process.
I hope that I have initially addressed the issues in your letter. Additional information related to
these areas and others will be forthcoming from CDHS. Do not hesitate to call me if you have
any questions about the information that I have provided.
Sincerely,
Patrick C. Horton, Manager
Office of Operations
Cc: Constance L.. Harbert, Chair, Board of Weld County Commissioners
Don Warden, Finance Officer, Weld County
Lennie Bottorff, Business Office, Weld County Department of Social Services
Patrick Lyness, CDHS
Tom Allen, CDHS
Ted Martin, CDHS
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