Travis County Commssioners Court
October 14, 2003
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Item 18
Afternoon Discussion
This morning we did start a discussion, number 18. Let's call it back up, that is to consider and take appropriate action on staff recommendations for purchase of social services from community based organizations.
>> judge, we want to thank you, yes indeeddy we got an answer to the question from this morning. The quick answer is no.
>> thank you for clarification that. You scared me.
>> we are all trying to pull together, a team of people, and kind of prior to people resigning, education, prior to somebody getting the "notice to proceed." We work towards negotiating the substance, the programmatic part of this, but we not move forward unless the administrative and fiscal requirements are met. That was what I said at the actually -- after actually giving you my recommendation earlier, I have no intentions of -- of having us do business with someone who is not meeting our requirements.
>> seems to me if you -- [papers shuffling - audio interference] even after the training take place, [papers shuffling - audio interference] all of these things we are talking about are placed on the table, implemented then looked forward to as far as going forward, if there is still some hesitation of -- of person not cooperating and do as we are dictating it, really, I don't know how we deal with the city of Austin on some stuff. I really don't know how we can deal with that. There's going to be something there that really gives us some teeth as far as how we deal with things of that nature. [indiscernible] invoices, has to be some teeth into this where we can kind of latch on and hold on to it and make sure we shake something out of this.
>> I agree and --
>> if it's not that way, we are spinning our wheels. Who ends up suffering is the person out there who needs the service from a social service contracts. This is the last thing I think that I -- I know this court really don't want to see. None of us want to see those folks out there suffer needlessless because of administrative, someone don't want to cooperate. But again communication I think is the key. But how do we have the teeth in the enforcement powers to make sure that it happens positively to serve our folks out there.
>> Commissioner, I have to say that I am more comfortable with [indiscernible] today. We have been working very closely with them. As I said earlier, the administrative review and fiscal review process is underway. I will get clearer on exactly what we need to do in terms of pulling the internal team together so that we can make this happen in a way that would be, I think, effective for all of us. And positive for all of us. I think -- I think really with a lot of this issue the communications aren't really what they need to be. And I accept, you know, part of my responsibility for that. But I just think that we continue to go over and over these processes when we don't move forward with that. That their does need to be a level of clarity, I think, involved in this.
>> okay. Commissioner Daugherty?
>> stephen, I guess I have two or three concerns would be owe they won't be predicated on yesterday's deal. Because yesterday I think hopefully we understand at least what the precinct 3 Commissioner would like to see out of these social service contracts. I do think that you are in, you know, what of a predicament here because like in your investment framework, that you could, I mean, you know, the emphasis that really need to take place with you is increased flexibility and the main obtaining of the critical services. I mean that's what hhs does. But where I am nervous, not just you, I think that -- that a number of interlocal agreements, which is basically what we have here, I mean, these are just all a bunch of interlocal agreements, you know, when we have 54 social services contracts, you know, you have really got to depend on -- on somebody making sure that they are doing the -- the right thing. The things that are most important is some sort of a procurement process. I would be very skeptical of short cutting that at this stage. I mean, maybe I can get comfortable. You know, with it after -- after a while. Number 2, performance measures. I don't -- I mean, I for one in my office, I'm going to see to it that -- that we send something out to everybody that we help fund and ask them what their performance measures are. And then number 3, compliance review/demands, whatever you want to call it, but those are really the three things that I think that we would be remiss not -- not taking care of. Now, you know, I don't know if somebody does -- I don't know what capital idea does. I know capital idea in fy '02 got $800,000 from us. And then got another -- going to get another $600,000 from us this year. By the way, that happens to be one of the 24 that we don't have the audits from. Now, I don't know earlier we -- somebody said there were six. But I got something as late as yesterday at -- at 4:38 p.m. That showed that there were -- that there are 24 out of 52 social agencies that we do not have audits on. Now, I don't know -- I mean, in that -- that came from jose.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> if the audit has been done and the contract requires that it be delivered in a certain time, you're really talking about compliance more than communicating. If you do the audit, keep it to yourself. But doesn't the contract say the contract is supposed to be delivered to Travis County?
>> yes.
>> it seems to me if you haven't done audit, it's bad, we ought to let you know, you -- i'll let you know 30 days in advance of when it's due and say we need that audit by this date right here, but if that date comes we need to say if you haven't got the audit done, you need to get it done in 30 days, otherwise we have to stop.
>> that makes sense to me.
>> if you have done the audit and the contract requires that you deliver it to us, it's easy in the sense that you've done it and it's a good audit and that's good news, but if we don't receive it, we don't know it's good news.
>> that's right.
>> the right person doesn't receive it. I know the emergency service district has to have an audit turned in and I was amazed how many times they sent it to the Commissioners. You did get this to the auditor's office, right?
>> no. And they were like no, no, get them to the right place.
>> richey is correct, six or 24.
>> they're both. And the reason that I say this, his information is not incorrect in that it's dated. We have more current information. Now, if the question of whether or not is actually in internal audit, the answer to that is no.
>> the contract requires delivery of the audit to what department?
>> it requires deliver rans of that to us.
>> and us being hhs is supposed to deliver it to the audit office, right?
>> I'm not really clear on that.
>> well, if they're looking at compliance and auditing that and they don't have the document that says that they can match it up again, they've got a problem in that they ought not to have to go around looking for it. Make a copy -- [overlapping speakers].
>> I agree with that.
>> that's what I'm saying. These are simple steps, but if they don't get done --
>> it appears that there's a gap.
>> we have two executive directors representing two agencies that are on that list of 24 who all have evidence that they had submitted those audits.
>> to whom?
>> it was -- [overlapping speakers].
>> we submitted as per the contract our audit for I guess it was the 2002 audit to david walsh, who is your contract monitor at the city.
>> that's city?
>> postage log documenting it.
>> david is supposed to give it to hhs and hhs is supposed to give it to the audit. So we're not following through on the chain basically.
>> yes.
>> and we ought to do that.
>> and the customer.
>> and basically when I was referencing the six to eight, I had set back with the hhs staff, both city and county, and they had cropped off -- crossed off most of the agencies that had in fact turned in audited statements, so that's where the six to eight that hadn't -- as of this date turned them in.
>> Karen, in terms of this thing that we're talking about here in terms of pulling together all of the entities and then to turn over and get better education, is this something where awe sha could be helpful in terms of education process and even the fact that there may be a slightly different process as you go through the city of Austin versus Travis County? One is not necessarily the other, but could ausha help us in this way in terms of not only distributing information, but to be part of the training and being part of the solution?
>> we would be more than happy to. And in fact, what I said this morning stands. We support strong accountability. We want all of the health and human services contractors to be very successful and the relationship to be very transparent. There should not be any question when these contracts come before you on the performances that are being met, on the physical and administrative accountability that is being demonstrated. So we would fully is support and embrace a joint collaboration to ensure that those steps and processes are in place because that was one of our number one things when we did our retreat planning of wanting to, you know, really showcase how incredible -- I mean, how five dollars of the city or county is leveraged into probably three thousand dollars into the community. And in fact, that's a study that we're entering into between the chamber of commerce, united way and hopefully show that the money that the city and the county invests in health and human services is more than probably -- I don't want to exaggerate, but it's probably compounded at least 10 to 20% times as much money. Most of the health and human services contracts account for between five and 15 percent of nonprofit's budgets. So it's real important to know that we want these questions asked and we want full disclosure, and everything to be accurate.
>> and I think it's good as far as disclosure. I remember Commissioner Sonleitner brought up a point a few weeks ago and I think it was very received. And that is when the agencies that come here to Travis County actually receive money from Travis County, but when they disclose or advertise or anything like that Travis County comes up, is there other people that get a lot of -- these are everybody that we're dealing with, city, county, all of them, they're all our citizens. And, of course, I think folks need to know that Travis County is investing quite a bit of money.
>> we've actually taken steps to rectify that. A letter has gone out to all the agencies.
>> it belongs to all of us.
>> absolutely.
>> right.
>> I would be interested to know was there the same kind of conversation in 13101402? I would be willing to bet that somebody could have given me this kind of sheet or four sheets stapled together last year that would have -- that might have had the same kind of question. And I'm just nervous, y'all. I'm just nervous as an elected official when somebody says, you know, you are spending money, kind of like -- and we're pretty good at spending money. And especially in areas where I'm not real sure that you're getting bang for the buck. And so that's the reason that I go back to performance audits or performance measures. But steven, this whole thing really is about can I short-circuit this -- all of this stuff like the city is doing, and I'm not comfortable doing that because there are questions that my auditor has, there are questions that my purchasing agent has. And I don't think that that is sound reasoning and policy to go against somebody that says, do you know what, there are some issues here. There are issues about people billing us for steak house meals or for t-shirts. I'm not trying to throw everybody in the deal because obviously probably 95% of all the agencies are doing the jobs -- because most of them are volunteers. So nobody wants to jump in the middle of volunteers. But I do have a great concern about short-circuiting anything that I know has got a little bit of an issue here and connecting the dots for me is real important. I would love to think that I am fully comfortable with steven williams and hhs that knows when a bill gets sent over there that it's looked at, it verified and when it goes to the auditor that the auditor doesn't have to take time, doesn't have -- I don't think the auditor should be sending a runner to a social service agency and saying, by wait, where is your -- I mean, if there are six of them on here, I think that those six need to be contacted and say, do you know what, we are not funding, we are not funding another penny until you comply, and maybe we ought to have something in the policy that says, and if you do two of these, then we just may not consider funding the agency again. I want somebody's attention out of this thing -- it's great to have a bunch of people that want to hold hands and say we want to do this for children, but these are public dollars that we've got to take care of. So I would rather see -- i'd rather see purchasing do their job, i'd like to see you all give all the information that needs to be given to auditing so that everybody's job is a lot easier and everybody is like -- I mean, we comply with every one of those things.
>> I'm not saying anything any different than what you're saying except that on the procurement piece of it. I'm asking for an exemption to the procurement process. The exemption for the procurement process which would lead to negotiation with the current vendors would not -- even if we did an rfs, it wouldn't solve the issues that you're raising. I'm saying given the time, given the fact that we're 40% of the dollars that are on the table here, given the fact that I really do want to spend most of the time looking at some programmatic direction and doing the administrative checks and reviews that you're talking about, ensuring that all that is in place, that there's just not time to do an rfs. And that we can still do due diligence on the administrative requirements as well as the programmatic direction by entering -- by starting the negotiations. What I committed to do was to not bring any contract forward for approval by this court unless we checked off on that -- every slot on that administrative review process. If I brought a contract before -- and I have done this in certain circumstances -- i've disclosed, hey, we're a little iffy about this, but given the services and the population, whatever, we want to give it a try. So there would be full disclosure on that. I don't think that by putting an rfs is, cyd said earlier, we wouldn't be done in a certain process in time, that we wouldn't get any significant change because we went through that process. We have the same -- we will have the same checks and balances in place before we brought a contract to you.
>> steven, the only thing I would kind of say in between that -- I do believe going through an rfs program we're going to find that we will have life works, we will have elder care, we will have the same players here in terms of the ones that are doing these wonderful services on our behalf. However, when you say to exempt and you would not bring us anything that didn't have a checklist done, I think there's something in between there. And that is that it seems like you working with susan and purchasing could resolve --
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> who do we have -- i'll use the word issues. Where are there some outstanding issues? And I would not tell those agencies we are going to renew you. See if you can work through those issues. And if you do, that's when -- when the recommendation will come back to Commissioners court saying now we would like to enter into negotiations and bring you back a contract on these people. My concern is that if you say we're just going to renew everybody and nothing firm will be brought forward unless we've got that checklist is that you're sending the wrong message to those that have been creating issues for us that, hey, it will all get worked out, just get the list fixed. And it doesn't really address the problems. I would not say you are going to get renewed until you get those things worked out. And if it is worked out to everybody's satisfaction, that's when you come to the Commissioners court and say now we would like to give notice to renew these folks and work on a final contract. And let us have a say so as to whether we're satisfied with what's been worked out, whether we think all the issues that susan or cyd or anyone else might bring up. But I would not say everyone's in until we are wanting to be exactly there.
>> I agree with that. There's a slight dichs in that the -- difference in that the court social services contracts, there are not any issues being raised with those. The issues that are being raised are actually being raised with entities that are outside of the core social services contracts.
>> and I think that might be 95% of the ones that you want to bring forward are ready to say, do you know what, we want to go ahead and reenter into one-year extensions of these contracts, exempt them, move on, bring back accessible contracts still with the checklist thing. But I am not ready for that five percent or whatever it is -- maybe it's two percent, maybe it's only one percent by the time you all figure out exactly who has what information. But I'm not saying I even want to renew those folks until we get a better sense of whether these are issues that we can ever get worked out.
>> i'd like to recognize that -- I guess what we're calling the coordinated integrated delivery system, that's what I'm calling core, correct? And I think a lot of work has been done on that. I know for eight years that i've been here we've worked toward that, getting to the integrated delivery system so that there is more efficiency in the delivery of that core service. So we can't throw the baby out with the bath water, so let's not do that and I don't want to start all over again. But I think it is useful to go back occasionally to see who else is out there in the community to wants to participate in this integrated delivery system which has already been developed by this court with the auditor, with purchasing, with the agencies and everybody else as a partnership. So I don't want to start all over again. I really don't like that feeling. But I think that we can do what has been suggested. I think --
>> I'm comfortable with that.
>> okay.
>> but we do need to know that we are going to work toward that goal of being able to go out and advertising to everybody --
>> that was actually our goal. And my health subcommittee, a certain judge was actually pushing this over the last year to do so. But what has happened -- financing and the timing of the financing has actually been an issue for the last two years. First first it was an issue with the city of Austin of how much would be available, then it was an issue with us in Travis County as to what was going to be available. And of course, now we're dealing with that five percent reduction on the city of Austin side. So it's never been our intent not to go out, it's just that circumstances actually have complicated our doing that. As a staff we have felt more comfortable going out on a fresh rfs process.
>> so can we be ready for that process in six months?
>> I'm not comfortable saying six months. I think that it would be better to do it a year. There are some things that we're going to do within the community action network as it relates to the broader community planning that will, I think, establish some blueprints that will guide our procurement activities. I would be more comfortable with that.
>> I think you were answering a different question. I think what she's asking is the intent in a year from now is that we will have a fresh rfs to be making decisions off of. When do you begin that process?
>> yes. The answer is -- yes. It takes that long to do it. It takes that long to do it, yes.
>> my immediate concern is like right now. I think you're suggesting to come back in a year with a fresh request or proposal. On the immediate end, though, and listening to whatever one says here today, how can these things be translated to those persons that we get the services from? An example, the judge mentioned the contractual language. Like it's 180 days we have as far as to deal with the audit report. Of course if we could let them know 30 days prior to that, put them on notice in other words. Those are very critical points. The accountability, we heard about that. We've heard about the compliance issues, who's non-complying and are we going to comply, to make them comply. We've heard about performance measures. We've also heard about the audit reports. We've heard about the job training aspects of all of these things. And we've also talked about the -- not a performance measure, but also the teeth of the enforcement end of this if they don't comply, along with the city of Austin's role in this as far as what they're doing and hurting us in this process and not assisting us the way they should. In order, the county standards versus theirs. Appears to me when would these persons know -- even if we say let's go out for an exempt -- for the exempting of persons as far as selecting a person, my point and my question is how long do you need on that and when can you come back? The things that this court has put on the table today to tell the person that is providing services, this is what the court would like to see whap, can you do it? How long would that take?
>> I think that this forum and this discussion is adequately communicating that message to all parties that are involved.
>> okay. So when you -- okay.
>> all right. Well, I just want to make sure -- what about the ones that don't watch us on television after work, steven? How do they learn?
>> well, I was just going to say after this morning with all the media here, I think we have a public relations issue to deal with as nonprofits. And certainly tomorrow at our monthly meeting we will deal with that. I again stand by -- I cannot believe that the issues that were raised by the city auditor have to do with more than a handful of the agencies, if that. The number of agencies that probably are involved in the kind of issues you are talking about, I really cannot believe are more than five or six. But we definitely want to deal with that because I think, as I said, one bad apple can completely upset the whole cart when we're all put in as social service contract agencies. And talk about in the light altogether.
>> Karen is the county auditor -- [ laughter ]
>> do we think the city of Austin understands what factors the county reviews on whether to pay the invoice?
>> yes, I do. Earlier I was going to ask the city of Austin monitoring staff to come up and just give you a brief overview of some of the things that they have been doing, but I don't think that's appropriate at this point.
>> and how do we explain the invoices that have come over that have been kind of off the target really?
>> that is not a contract that this staff even deals with. And the city of Austin's monitoring staff deals with. That's when I was telling you earlier that the core body of the social services contracts, I haven't heard any issues about those. It is a specific contract that we have that is similar. In order to try to give you a total picture of what you're investing, we list all of the contracts in the related areas.
>> I'm not talking about the total picture. The specific invoices that come over that the auditor doesn't pay for specific reasons, and what's clear to me is to have a -- had a county person been in the city office, this would have been discovered early on. There would have been a sit down discussion with the agency so that the invoice could have been corrected. So the invoice going back and fort and the agency is not getting paid and in the meantime we're looking at the invoice and wondering how could this get by the city of Austin and (indiscernible) before getting to the auditor's office. And there are specific examples where that happened.
>> absolutely.
>> my question is how do we prevent that? It seems to me first we have to understand exactly what it is we expect, for example, if the audit is delivered to health and human services, I expect health and human services would immediately get a copy or the originals to the auditor. That apparently is not taking place. Otherwise you wouldn't have one number and the city would have another and it might not be so grossly different.
>> absolutely.
>> you're talking about a difference between six and 24.
>> yes.
>> the other thing is that for agencies, no matter what service they provide, it seems to me that from day one they should know here is how you get paid.
>> yes.
>> and then if they don't submit an appropriate invoice, they could understand why they're not getting paid.
>> yes.
>> the other thing it seems to me that our practices ought to be, you don't submit a valid invoice, we don't pay you until it's corrected.
>> I agree.
>> it may take two days, may take two or three weeks. And when they call us, we can say was the invoice valid? No, it wasn't. You really need to work on fixing it. I mean, I don't know that we really have -- it's as clear-cut as we think, especially for the agencies that are creating problems for us.
>> I think that would be a good first sentence, really outlining those expectations to make sure we're on the same page as a vendor as well as our internal services perspective. [overlapping speakers].
>> judge, how do we get that? Is that part of what you were suggesting the group get together and work out that procedure?
>> I would come up with a real simple outline setting forth here's out how you get paid. The other thing is even if county staff, it looks like we need to be reminded the county pays for services already provided, not services in advance. And the other thing that we ought to know, but apparently don't, so I suggested training for those who need it on the mandatory base than for those who ought to have it on a voluntary basis. But to give us an opportunity also to kind of double-check our standards, make sure we know them, make sure we take the appropriate actions.
>> I agree.
>> this conversation kind of makes me think it's important. The other thing is on performance measures, they ought to be in the contract. The monitor ought to check to see if the performance measures be being met.
>> oh, they are.
>> they are. And do you have the manpower, steven, to go and to monitor on a yearly basis every one of these performance measures for all the agencies that we -- just your staff?
>> no.
>> so you're saying that --
>> let me clarify. I shouldn't answer it real simple. I do not have county staff to do that. That is not a part of the way that we structured the function. It is a city of Austin staff that actually goes out and conducts the site visits and monitoring.
>> so therefore a real clear contract, if they're going to be monitoring for us, is needed. > we do have grant coordinators that do contracting, process payments, monitoring activities. We only have two general fund contract coordinators that are available to do that. At this point all of our others are grant funded and have to be focused on those agencies that also have grant funds. Which is about -- I shouldn't put a number on it, but it's less than half of the total social service agencies. We have one county grant coordinator and one city funded grant coordinator that are focused on this. And so in answer to your question, Commissioner Daugherty, we don't have enough to do every agency every year, but we are going to be doing -- we do do risk assessments to identify those agencies that are the highest priority to monitor, and we will be going out to those agencies.
>> that's a little frightening to me. Me to me to hear that we really don't have the ability to go out and to monitor the performance measures of -- this painful is three and a half million dollars that we funded last year, and roughly the same for this year.
>> I would say -- I'm sorry.
>> no, go ahead.
>> I would say that -- I shouldn't say that what we don't have the staff to do is go out and do a full scale formal monitoring. We to have staff that interact with the agencies on a daily and weekly basis. We have staff -- all of the program staff do go out and visit with the agencies and see what they're doing, see how they're collecting the data, and those types of things. So we do interact with the agencies. But to actually do a formal monitoring of both the fiscal administrative end performance, the performance piece of it is not as extensive mostly as the fiscal administrative piece is the piece that takes the most time. But we do have a program staff that go out and visit with the agencies on a regular basis and see how they are performing.
>> vince, what I don't want to see us do because I think that this is what is government -- gives government a bad name. And let's face it, we're all citizens. And if you listen to people and hear people talk about, they just flippantly do that. They give this money over here and give this money over here and what are you really get fog your dollars? I think all of us as taxpayers, I'm certainly willing to pay taxes, I'm certainly willing to see a portion of them go to nonprofits, but I certainly want to make sure that whenever I tell somebody, do you know what, we funded or we helped fund that program and we know because there is -- I can read susan's write-ups on her audits on the departments. I mean, she goes and you can read and she tells you this is what I found, this is what I found, this is what you need help with. This is inadequate, all of those kind of things. And I don't know, steven. If I were to see a giant file and it said okay, there are 52 of these social agencies, do you have a file that would show where I could go and say, I mean, give me number a capital area homeless alliance. I'd like to see the file on that thing, and is there a write-up that says here is -- is that something that the city -- that either the city has or that you have in your file if I wanted to come over and I said I wanted to sit down and read the cliff notes to each one of those things and basically kind of audits that we see from susan? Do we have the ability to do that? And are some of them maybe old, like we haven't gone out and done that one for a while? Is that what I would find?
>> I think that we do have contract files obviously with the agencies and records of the interactions with that and the performance that they reported, the payments that they received and technical assistance we provided to them and things like that. I think that we don't do as many actual monitorings and write-up of monitorings as we'd like to do each year. We just do a handful at this point. I would say probably 10 with the staff that we have, both -- with the exception of those agencies that also have grant funds, those agencies that have grant funds have staff that are funded by the grants that we can dedicate to making sure that those formal monitorings occur, but we do do informal monitorings on a regular basis.
>> i'll make one last statement and move off of this thing. I mean, when Commissioner Gomez asked the judge, well, how do we do this? Well, I will tell you how I expect it to be done. We have an executive manager that's over hhs, and that is the job of the hhs executive manager as far as I'm concerned. I don't mind paying the salary, I don't mind, you know, you coming to them and saying these are the tools that I need in order to do this, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm a very resulted oriented kind of a manager. And wherever I ask how can we verify and how do we know what's going on, I expect for steven williams to be able to tell me that. And I have noticed that -- I don't know why -- well, we're not on the same page or we haven't communicated. My god, we didn't start hhs last Thursday. You've been the hhs manager for, what, steven, eight years? So some of this just seems to be pretty elementary. I mean, I don't know why we would have to sit and go through two hours of this kind of stuff on somebody that -- I mean, you've forgotten more about this than I know or will ever know. So I just expect it to come out of your representative so that I can buy off -- sign off on it and am cfbl with what it is. I don't need to be in a meeting with the auditor's office about invoicing. I don't need to be in meetings with the purchasing agent about, well, i've got some conflicts with that. I mean, I expect that to be done, you know, aside from me having to get in and make these calls. So I would hope that that's what -- that that's what we would work on. And it really does frighten me to think that we don't have the ability to go and to monitor and for look at the performance measures of everything that we fund. I mean, we are being taken advantage of somewhere, and that is not something that I am comfortable with. I don't think anybody in this community could be comfortable with it. And we ought to find a way to do a better job, I mean, systematically. Even if you say do you know what, we've got these many agencies and we can only do, you know, 16 of them a year. Okay, well, I'm willing to say it's going to take you 3.2 years to do those things, but -- because if you don't, people just get used to the fact that do you know what? Just submit something. If it sticks, great. I mean, if it doesn't, well, I mean, then we'll react to it and give them what we think that they need. And that's just not -- that's not acceptable. I can't -- I mean, I don't want the auditor's office -- kind of like I used the example yesterday of cell phones. My god, i'd rather just go -- let's just give everybody a 35-dollar cell phone bill versus having three people in the audit office trying to go through every 19-cent phone call or whatever that there is. And that's a little bit of kind of what approximate some of this stuff because some of them are like $70. And why lure accusing at $70 out of a couple-million-dollar gig, that's .01 to the ninth power. Who cares? Unfortunately, we should care because that might be systematic of some of the areas that we need to be looking at real hard. So I'm glad y'all are having a meeting tomorrow night and I'm sure somebody will say we had a pretty lengthy discussion about this.
>> Commissioner, we are putting those systems in place and the risk assessment is the first stage so that we know which of the highest priority agencies to monitor over the next year. And we will be doing that on a regular basis.
>> and I hope that works. I think one of the other things that we could consider is in order to get these monitored by an independent entity, maybe that's the answer. Someone who can't be pressured by anyone in order to get these funds because it is tax power money. But however we approach trying to find the procedure that needs to be followed, I want it done. And if it called for a committee, let's do a committee. Whatever, but let's get it done. By the way, if we were monitoring 16 agencies per year, we would have gotten this done in three years. And we would know what exactly is happening. But this process that is in place right now has been in place eight years. Or since i've been here?
>> actually, we had a more extensive process in place in prior years.
>> we're coming up on nine years here.
>> you actually required me to bring in three ring binders. I have about nine in my office upstairs that actually listed the performance measures associated with each social service contract. My staff and I really actually talking about that. It's only been -- I guess in the last three years that some of these issues have been coming up, but in terms of the performance measures, which is something we hype, we were required to give you those big books and the reports in the last couple of years we have not been doing that. They exist, be just don't document it in that three-ring binder.
>> I also want to see like I said accountability, the impact of the dollars that we spend.
>> a lot of the performance measures do address not only the actual service levels, but also the outcomes associated with the services that are being provided. Because of the number of agencies, we're talking about maybe a dozen performance measures per agency, and that's one of the things that I want to really look at so we can try to automate some of this stuff.
>> how many agencies do we have? 74?
>> 52.
>> 52 or 56.
>> it's a lot more than that.
>> what's the number?
>> I don't know the number.
>> yonl the exact number.
>> okay. Let me just tell you what my personal commitment is going to be on on this. And dick, if you're within the sound of my voice, don't scream at me. I'm going to make a personal commitment to meet every single one of these agencies over the next year. So if it's 52, it will take me 52 weeks. But I'm going to pick one agency every single week and spend two hours to go over there, meet everybody involved and get a better sense of these things. Because looking at a piece of paper is not serving me well. That is my personal commitment in terms of what I'm going to do to get a better feel for what's going on here. So if it's 52, it will take me 52 weeks. If it's 54, 54 weeks. Start getting ready. [overlapping speakers].
>> there were 50 something agencies my first year on the board.
>> instead of you coming in to see me, I want to go out to you.
>> it's not going to be a dog show type of visit, just a talk about what you do and how you do it. Because that will make me feel that i'll really know what I'm investing in.
>> one time it was 50 some-odd -- [overlapping speakers].
>> at that time we were going to go back and look and see the redundancy and a whole bunch of other stuff, and of course now it's down to 52. Of course, along with that performance measures also were something sha we were trying to figure out where we were with the performance measures. It is still very critical in my mind. [overlapping speakers].
>> first of all, I know you've asked this, Commissioner Daugherty, you talked about you don't have the ability. You're talking about the practical ability and not the legal ability because it's clear that under a contract i've got it right here that we've got the right to make those site visits and gather what we want. And this isn't anything different in the human services contract. In many of the contracts that the county possesses, we've got all kind of additional rights to require audits of our contractor to do things and we don't always do that. It's just that first we have the legal right and if we see the red flags that warrant it, we have the right to go in there and get answers. This is a separate decision between what your legal rights are and how you choose to make decisions on what's the big bang for the buck to get compliance with your contracts. Secondly, I think I'm on my the right to go in there and get answers. This is a separate decision between what your legal rights are and how you choose to make decisions on what's the big bang for the buck to get compliance with your contracts. Secondly, I think I'm on my sixth year now with the united way board of directors, and i've had the pleasure of serving on -- as chair of their community investment committee like the last three years. I just ended that. And we -- that committee is responsible for making recommendations for allocations of something like five million dollars to I think it was 46 agencies. I'll bet you those 46 are all part of the 60 or so that you've got. And I just wanted to point out we have the same challenges that we deal with with regard to site visits. When we pick the 46, I recall, there were 11 of them that we thought were kind of on the line about past performance or that they had some red flag that kicked up and we identified 11 that we were going to do office visits. We don't do side visits for all of them either. We pick the ones that are important, just like you mentioned you've got to focus sometimes because that's all the resources we have. But secondly I want to make the point that to remember that there are these agencies that we contract with are contracting with federal government, city and other grant dollars that are requiring very similar monitoring, very similar reports that we can leverage off of that as well. I mean, an agency sits there and is asking us would you please standardize some of this so we don't have to do 20 different things. Can we all agree on what you want to see because by and large they want to provide it. We just have to find right way to get the information we want and we run into specific problems like the auditor has found. Those are different from performance. Those are really validating your reimbursements that they deal with those honest and appropriate and ex-speed yent way to we can get to the bottom and see whether we need to trigger the notifications to do some greater review. So as hard adds it's been to watch, you're no different than a lot of other agencies i've been involved in. And there is a way to work together to get what we all really want is to get the services provided and be accountable to the public for them.
>> one of the things we've seen over the past nine years is more and more we're hearing the answer, we don't do that, the city does it. And the reality is this is county money coming out of county taxes, county law prevails and I guess like you, comiser Daugherty, I expect the executive manager for health and human services to do it and to take care of the county's interest in communicating to us. I understand why people working for the city may not feel that way, but the reality is it is our money. And when these interlocals are designed and we've got a number of huge ones, you know, I think, for instance, now we're hearing, well, the contract monitoring is done by the city. I don't know that y'all contemplated that when we went into an interlocal that we would give up our ability to ask questions or do contract monitoring or get what we want because that part of what we all do is done by city people. And so I think as we're structuring those things, y'all need to be able to get the information y'all need however we decided to do that in the symbol and the same -- interlocal and the same with our office, the financial part. We really don't have the authority to say well, it's 70 bucks, it's not that big of a deal because it is a big deal. And it may be assign of an even bigger deal. And we're getting a really bad feeling. The other thing is it is not efficient for my office to spend four mon weeks an invoice. And for y'all to spend the hours that you have, and that's what's happening, it's not efficient. It's not a good spending of money. And I do think that right at the outset agencies need to understand we can't give them a gift. We can't say here's $10,000. Go forward and do well. We can't do that. We need to know what we're specifically going to get as a government and they should not enter into a contract. If we're paying the salaries, they need a timesheet and they need to be signed and contract. If they don't want to do that, then they should have a contract and pay a payroll. I guess if there are things that they should not do, -- they need to be doing something else and maybe they shouldn't contract with them. But they're agreeing to things that they have no intention of doing. And they will call me or my people in a very angry, emotional state saying why do we think we should provide this, they can't? And my answer is why did you sign a contract where you agreed to do this? They need to be careful. It more than just sign a contract to get the money. You have to be able to do what you contract for. And we dant disburse until the -- can't disburse until the evidence is in. And we don't have the time to spend week after week after week on things that ought to be obvious. That's kind of where we're coming from, that we expect someone on the county payroll to be responsible for those programs that Travis County is paying for.
>> if it's the court's desire for county direct staff to do monitoring, and i'd be happy to give you a proposal on that. We've been contemplating it the last couple of years. Certainly we've been faced with economic challenge. And considering the fact that we're in health and human services we chose to direct those dollars to direct services. This is a question of a comfort level that you're having with us not doing that, then i'll be more than happy to do that. And just for the record, i've never considered these contracts a gift. Therefore I think we need to be mindful with some of the projections that we're putting out there. I don't think anybody is out there trying to just rip us off on a daily basis. I do believe that we should follow the -- stay within parameters from a procurement standpoint, from a reimbursement standpoint. But I guess I should say what I said earlier because I'm not so sure that we're really picking up on that theme. I'm not so sure that we as a county organization from the county attorney's perspective, from a procurement perspective, health and human services standpoint, the auditing perspective, are really on the same paing page. I think that that has to be the first step. Judge, you mentioned writing down what we expect in terms of process and in terms of documentation. I think we have to do that before we go outside and decide to carry a message to outside agencies. You know, we've tried that. I'll assume some of the responsibility for that. But Commissioner Daugherty, communication is the responsibility of all of those parties involved. I'm telling you that I am willing to take on the monitoring function in anything that you want. It won't be the first time that a Commissioners court has asked me to have a function directly under the county direct staff auspices. I took it on then and i'll take it on now, but you have to know that that will come at a price.
>> and that's okay as long as we get the information that is -- that we have to have, like -- like susan said, like the law and the counties. So as long as we get -- the law and the contracts. So as long as we get that I'm willing to along at the proposals, but it still goes down to you ultimately for you and the staff to monitor and get everything in order, get to to the aher's office on a timely basis. That's what it comes down to anyway.
>> I totally accept that, but we have to go back. When we started to do businesslike that, the agreement was that we on the county side will assume the planning and evaluation and responsibilities and support of the community action network. We agree that the monitoring function would be the responsibility of the city of Austin. In fact, it's a concept that we want to move past, then if you tell me that then I will bring forth a proposal to do just that, but --
>> steven, it's something a little short of that. It seems like if we do that it ought to be as a last resort. When we said we do the planning, we meant also we would take the responsibility to fund the planning. When the city said okay, we'll do the monitoring, then accept responsibility for funding as a monitoring component.
>> that's true.
>> now, I don't know that we have a right to expect the city to read our mind. Clearly either we've been expecting that or they've been misleading that on the re-- misreading that on the review of invoices. It seems like we ought to share these with the city. If this doesn't work, then we may not have any choice but to say, okay, we don't do planning for the city, we do planning and monitoring for the county. The question is I don't get the same dollars that the city is spending to cover both of them. If that's the most efficient --
>> no, it's not.
>> but at the same time it seems to me that as a last resort we may need to do that. Sort of that -- I think coming up with the expectations -- because I do think there's a disconnect. That we ought to do that, that we ought to share especially this with the city and iron out those aishz and have them with on -- train the agencies that clearly have invoicing problems. And that we take care of them and ausha on their offer to share this information with their members. We ought to try to get as much of this done over the next few months as possible. And really the invoicing thing, the next two or three weeks.
>> yes.
>> it wouldn't hurt to see an outline of the different steps of how we would get this done. Then we would have a lot more time I think to prepare for an r.f.p. For next year. Now, somebody needs to be looking to make sure that performance measures are being looked at. And impact is being assessed.
>> we'll talk about impact later, but okay, I agree.
>> that's okay. Just so it doesn't fall through the cracks.
>> but I think the thing is if we said okay, we'll pull the recommendation to do existing contracts contingent upon basically outlining your expectations dealing with these invoicing issues, agencies that have shortcomings, delivered orders, the ones that haven't transferred them to the auditor, that ought to be done in a matter of hours. Some of this stuff is real simple. Let's get it done. So if we do it with that understanding -- we need an out liep for court to look at. It wouldn't hurt for us to put our heads together and say this is how we're going. If you have a training session it makes sense to have the training director there and also hhs. And also have the city of Austin there too.
>> it will be.
>> and whoever -- whatever agencies want to come and participate.
>> okay.
>> and I'm not thinking that's going to take forever to get this done.
>> I know your vision in terms of it ought to be mandatory to folks that have issues, and voluntary for everyone else, but I really don't have a problem with -- especially if we can get this down to about a two or three hour session. It ought to be mandatory for everyone. I don't get insulted when the state legislature tells me I need to put in 16 hours of continuing education. That's the rule for being a Commissioner. I do my hours and we move on, even though i've heard some of that stuff before, that's the gig. So to me that way you never have an issue if everybody on an annual basis gets run through the process because there may just be some different people. That way there's just -- there's a continuity of information always with these agencies that nobody presumes or assumes that somebody ought to have known that. Let's just have an annual renewal. Two hours. I mean, it's not anything less than we run a new employee through, hi, welcome to Travis County, here's where you're not parking. [ laughter ]
>> do we need to see a written outline of remedial steps next week?
>> we can do that, but I think the key point in my request is we ask for permission to move forward, but to not -- and I consider your comments regarding sending out the right message. If entities are in good standing with us, then we would move forward. If they're not, we won't. And I'm saying the bulk of the agencies are in good standing, so therefore we would move forward. Statement, I think some of the internal stuff that we're talking about smud go on. I don't think it's an either/or. I think some of this could be happening at the same time. And that's the essence of my request today, and that is that we move forward, not -- certainly not bring anything --
>> but if you're not in good standing, when did we see the memo that describes what steps you must take to get back into good standing?
>> we would have that in a couple of week. First is identification of those agencies that are not, and it's my understanding that the only two agencies that we're having those issues with --
>> see, I don't know that because what we've been getting for some of them is simply a spreadsheet with no backup whatsoever. And we've been assuming that hhs is monitoring that. Now that i've seen firsthand some of these other, I have longer have that comfort level. So we will send out a letter saying that we require certification from steven or or lean saying that we have looked at that and it meets the county standard. Given that I don't have to see every receipt known to man, but I'm real nervous right now. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to say if we can't see the backup based on what i've seen on those that we require backup, I'm going to want steven and his staff to sign off on that and say that they've monitored it and we're paying for payroll, they did the work, blah, blah, blah.
>> we don't even have a list before us that we can file with melissa and say you're in good standing, we're moving forward. There may be a maybe list and then there is a yes, we do have issues list. So even if I wanted to move forward today and say yes, let's press onward with the folks in good standing, I don't have any thing in front of me that says these are those folks. So is another week helpful to -- let us separate out -- we have no issues left to move forward --
>> two weeks.
>> move forward with good work because we owe it to these agencies, especially those that are in good standing, to say, hi folks, we intend to contract for another year's worth of services and we're going to get our collective paperwork act in order. All sides. Good understanding, we move forward. And those that are not in good standing need to have a pretty darn good clear indication that we are unhappy campers and with we need to separate out whether that is a problem with the agency, a communication problem or all of the above and a training issue. And it can easily be resolved. And there may be a third group in terms of we just choose not to do business with you new more. We're going to move on.
>> steven said something about that you may not have time to do the rfs.
>> we don't have the time.
>> that you won't have the time to do it, but I have heard from purchasing that purchasing thinks that they have the necessary staff and that they would like to do this.
>> so you want purchasing to decide what human services you purchase?
>> no. I want purchasing to do purchasing work, which is-- they can work with you for that, but are we side stepping what we need to be doing with regards to the purchasing process? I mean, i've got a purchasing agent that's telling me that this is how we ought to do this, and that she is capable of doing that.
>> these are professional services that we can exempt those kind of contracts. I mean, the amount of time that we've got, now being practically -- well, it is the middle of October. We've got new contracts coming into play. It is not an inexpensive, nor is it not a time consuming process to go through all this. I think we would get to the same end result. But with that said, it is time for us to start thinking of a new rfs and it is not too early to ever tell cyd, hi, we're going to be in a full blown rfs in fiscal year '04 with the anticipation that with the '05 contracts beginning in January of '05 that we will be operating and we need you to be fully involved and we need the auditor fully involved and it will be a process that will probably take four or five months. And we use the community conditions as the framework for what it is we choose to purchase.
>> that's my understanding of what the court wants to do today is to get all of us to work together on the current contracts renewing them. But six months from now we will be in a position where we would start a competitive process for the next fiscal year.
>> do you need two weeks to follow up?
>> what I will bring back to you is a list of agencies that we would suggest that we proceed with negotiations.
>> we need a list of that and a list of agencies that we think are not in good standing. We need an action on -- to see an outline of an action plan for those agencies not in good standing to get in good standing. We need an outline of a strategy that basically enables us to deal with some of these outstanding invoicing issues that if it's two weeks we may as share it with the city of Austin and get their input and make sure we get input from the auditor, purchasing, your staff. All these examples that we discussed it will take two weeks to dpe z an outline.
>> sound good to me.
>> we talked about a thousand things today. Not all of them need to be in the outside line, but we need to pick what we need to move on after October 28th in my view. That way the -- this meeting will be most productive. Okay?
>> I agree.
>> we appreciate you coming down. Have we heard from anybody who insists on providing additional input today? Thank you very much. October 28th we will have this back on. Thank you for coming down.
Last Modified: Tuesday, October 15, 2003 12:52 PM