Travis County Commssioners Court
January 20, 2004
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 26
On number 26 I did get a couple of questions asked. It was suggested that stephen williams try to meet with the auditor's office this morning, I was told that I would delay this item until late morning or early afternoon, so hopefully they will be able to get together and review the boilerplate language.
>> here's susan, did you all meet, susan? Did you all have the opportunity to meet this morning? Did you all have the opportunity to meet this morning with stephen?
>> [inaudible - no mic] we will call this item up early this afternoon, then. I chatted with stephen, he was out of town, I chatted with him and told him that I would delay this item until you've had an opportunity to we could get a status report. What we do, though, after the corporations this afternoon, make sure that we call it up. So corngss ought to -- corporations ought to take five or 10 minutes. Shortly after 1:30. We will call this up, get a status report. If there are still issues we will deal with them, if not we will know what to do. Okay. Thank you.
>> judge, is that because we have to take action today?
>> it would be good because our extension went through the end of January.
>> all right.
>> so when we get the status report, I guess we will see how things are and decide then what --
>> okay.
>> I think there is a take appropriate action here, sir, if we need to look at more than --
>> okay.
>> the contracts would still be brought back next week. But if we can [inaudible - no mic] that would be a good thing.
>> okay.
>> so after 1:30.
>>
>>
>>
We indicated our intention to call up number 26 earlier this afternoon and that is to consider and take appropriate action regarding proposed changes to the social service contract boilerplate.
>> did we have a meeting?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay.
>> I didn't say we agreed on everything. We had a meeting. [laughter]
>> I didn't ask that.
>> when we were discussing the social services contracts, several -- one of the issues surround surrounded our meeting with the social service agencies before the actual contract started to ensure that they had an orientation to the specific requirements within the social services contracts. We conducted -- we being the county staff, representatives from our department health and human services, auditor's office as well as purchasing, and the county attorney, conducted the orientation and in doing that -- during that meeting several issues were raised. When we brought that back to you a couple of weeks ago, your suggestion was we had informed you that we would meet with those agencies to try to reach some kind of an agreement. What you have before you and in the backup items is our recommendations at the meeting with the social service contract agencies. There are differences of opinion and items concerning the audit, overtime, travel, and capital equipment. But what you have in the backup is health and human services recommendations regarding these items. I'm just going to go down them in summary, reading from what we have proposing from a health and human services perspective. The -- the agencies related that they believed that the requirement for an audit was an unfunded mandate. It was required by the county, but we didn't reimburse it. Our recommendation is that we allow for reimbursement, of -- of a portion of the audit that's -- that's required to be conducted by the agencies. There was a lot of discussion regarding what we are requiring in terms of documentation for payment. In response to -- to our needing to certify the documentations that went to the auditor's office, we have recommended that -- that they submit the the agency submit general ledgers and copies of several documents in order to do that. Instead of going to that process, what we are going to do is review the detailed invoice documentation on site during the monitoring process. Monthly expenditure reports that would be consistent with what was budgeted would be checked before we were process -- before we would process those payments. There was some question about the -- the need for insurance for sexual harassment. We are recommending that that requirement remains intact after consultation with dan mansour. [indiscernible] when there was a -- if a billing was a few cents off, we would reprocess that. But what we are recommending, and the agencies are okay with this, is that if we in fact owe them less than $5, that we are -- with an e-mail saying that it's okay that we will go ahead and process their total bill with them forgiving the difference. The difference is that we have experienced in the last years are usually less than a dollar, it's usually due to rounding -- usually due to rounding. Overtime, we had a policy that said that we would not reimburse. We are requesting, we are recommending that we allow payments for necessary overtime. One of the things that the agency brought out is that they -- they through law have to pay overtime for certain employees, if in fact worked. There's some discussion regarding criminal history review and essentially, we are saying that the agencies must have procedures in place for checking the criminal history. Given the nature of some of the services we purchase, we are saying that we would limit offenses to crimes against persons, children and limit restrictions for substance buse offenses and --
>> this agreement about all of these are just some of them.
>> some of them. I'm covering all of them, not just the ones that we are in disagreement about.
>> okay. Do --
>> maybe you want to separate them.
>> you are running through the list. Do you then go back and highlight the ones --
>> yes, that's what I was going to do.
>> I was listening for the whole report and then go back.
>> okay.
>> we had required that the agencies notify us if they were going to require hultants. We are saying that -- consultants. We are saying if the budget for hiring the consultant was in the budget, that it's okay to hire those consultants. But that they -- that they should notify us if there is a change in the consultants that they were going to hire. Which translates into, I was just talking to donna, it's interesting how we look at things. Basically, if it's not in the budget, they can't hire a consultant. Travel, we -- we are recommending that -- that we allow reimbursements for -- for any individuals, including staff persons, which would include volunteers, parents, et cetera, by the contractor as long as the travel is related business. I know that in my earlier review, we had some portion in there where we had to preapprove travel that was not related. But give very much that second thought, we would want to -- we would not want to improve any travel that is not -- approve any travel that was not related to the business or the services that were being provided.
>> you think it would be easy for an agency to make that determination about whether it's related.
>> I think so. I mean, I think the common sense should rule.
>> that's the language?
>> I think the language that we put in the last draft was that it is up to them if they feel like they are not certain to check with the department. That we felt like that it ought to be pretty obvious whether a specific out of town travel is related to our contract purposes, but the burden is on them if they are not sure, if there's any doubt in their mind, they contact the department. The department will tell them.
>> okay.
>> but what if they don't ask and the expenditure is made and then we are caught with it's already been spent, so we have to deal with it?
>> if it's not within the purposes of the contract and the expense would be disallowed, that's put in there specifically in this provision, even though it's in other parts of the contract, if they don't follow the contract, an expense can be disallowed, we repeated that specifically in this provision that said, you know, if you are not sure, check with us. If you -- if you don't check with us, your guess is wrong, then it will be disallowed and it won't be paid.
>> okay. So that's the language.
>> uh-huh.
>> that's allowed and won't be --
>> okay. I -- I guess we could talk about the first issue, which is audits.
>> in a general sort of sense, what we have all been trying to do here is to get everyone's expectation the same. So we are getting there. You know, just ciebldz of chewing a-- kind of chewing away at these things. The first issue with regard to financial audits, one of the ways that we look at things, u know, what does the state require us to do or the laws require to us do because we deal with taxpayers' money that they involuntarily have to give the county. The county has to have a financial audit. When we get grant money here, we have to pay for audits for that grant money. So it is not unreasonable to have the contract language that we have right now, which is if you do business with the government, you need to have a financial audit and they need to pay for it. Because that's really what we have to do. I would not see that as an unfunded mandate. And the reason for the financial audit is that same as for our independent audit, is that you have certain standards that apply to an independent source looking at the financial, you know, dealings of your organization and making sure that you have got things in order, so we feel that it is important to -- to keep that in the contract, that they are required to have financial audits and they should pay for them just like the state doesn't send us money to pay for it. With he have to pay for it. In the grants we have the same thing. The granting agency does not pay for the ait. Travis County does and we accept the grant. We feel the same standard should be applied to the agencies and that's what we have in the current contract. So stepping off of that would be a -- a change.
>> when we are talking about audit, are we talking about simply limited to the amount of money that's -- that is being exchanged between the county and the agency?
>> we are not talking a full-blown audit.
>> we are saying the agency has to have -- I think the contracts now say the agency needs to be audited.
>> what usually happens is that they would do a -- an audit. The annual audit from an outside auditor. Of -- and a part of that is the moneys being accounted and in this case the city would be giving to the agencies. We are just saying that -- that, you know, we believe that -- that it's okay to pay a percentage of that since it is a requirement and we are going to use that as a tool.
>> well, Gerald and I have been visiting quite a few of the agencies, most of them are getting state and federal funds. They are required to do these audits anyway. Ideal we step forward and say we are going to pay for part of an audit when the state of tex is not stepping forward and saying that same thing, the federal government isn't, either. I mean, it seems like everybody would participate in paying for the audit or it would be the responsibility --
>> well, do they use state and federal funds to fund part of the audit? If it's prohibited as susan stated they wouldn't be able to do that. They would have to use funds raised elsewhere. I view the social service agencies as partners. This is an administrative requirement that I think that they should fulfill because it actually works in our best interests. I don't perceive that there's anything negative about us paying a portion of that because I consider it an appropriate administrative overhead.
>> but I don't -- I really think that's misuse of the term unfunded mandate. I really do. When we are trying to follow the expenditure of taxpayer money, which susan says some people don't pay that voluntarily, that's an unfunded mandate if we want to stretch the term that far. But, no, we are trying to track the expenditure of tax money. That's not an unfunded mandate.
>> there is no question they agree the audit should be performed. The issue is whether or not it's okay to use parts of our money to do that.
>> too, this also -- I had the impression that a lot of agencies had a lot more of our money as part of their mix. Some agencies are one and two percent of their entire budget. It would distres me that our dollars are being used rather than on direct services being helped to pay for an audit of an agency where 98% of their money is coming from someplace else.
>> well, for [indiscernible] I don't think you are correct when you say that it's not being used for direct services. I gave you a memo, actually I can give you another copy of that, that explains the difference between our tracking performance and them actually -- and how they we actually process our bills. There -- when we go out and talk with the agencies, our main focus primarily is trying to ensure that we got a certain level of services considering the dollars that we get. So we negotiate that. When they request payment, what we require them to do is to give us bills that track a budget that -- has they've -- that they've developed for us so that they can draw down that money. We don't reimburse for a unit of service directly. And so I -- I don't think that it's fair to say that because we are paying for that that we are not paying for direct services. If they billed us on unit cost, the cost of the audit would probably be factored into some administrative overhead that we would pay.
>> yes, sir?
>> I'm lehmanford, the -- lee manford, it's pretty standard practice for funders to allow reimbursement of audit costs on a pro rata basis. So I think what's really being asked here is that agencies be allowed to be reimbursed for a pro rata amount of an audit expense in relation to other funding sources. I don't think really what's being asked is to get reimbursed for more than what a pro rata share would be for an amount of audit that would be applicable to the specific funding. In is an administrative cost. It's not a cost of direct service. There are -- there are administrative caps within -- within the categorical budget that would be approved for an agency. So there are -- there are some safeguards here in terms of controlling that cost. I really think that that's what the providers are asking for. We have other funders who allow a pro rata share of reimbursement for audit expenses. If the agency chooses to include that in their administrative costs. We are just asking for the same thing from the county.
>> what if we do both? Can we do -- what if we provide if other funding entities authorize expenses for the audit, then Travis County would pay a pro rata share. So if we give you $100,000 and your budget is a million, that would be 10%. Audit costs $8,000, we would expect 800 to be covered by county money. If the other funding entities do not allow use of their funds to do the audit, then we don't either.
>> what if you have a mixed bag where some funders do, other funders don't?
>> well, my own view if we think that it's important enough to require them, we ought to think that it's important enough to pay for.
>> it can be part of the -- it can be probably taken out of the allocation then that we -- that we -- appropriate to that agency.
>> when we do the contract, we can set aside an amount for -- would we know up front.
>> the cost of the audited?
>> right.
>> generally.
>> or an estimate so you can put it in the contract basically that if you pay a pro rata share of the audit from here, we think it would be roughly appear estimate. If you don't need it, put it in direct services. If you need it, it's there. The problem is if you exceed that amount you would have to come back for authorization from somebody.
>> can I interpret what I think that you're saying.
>> we were just talking, not doing anything, just talking.
>> don't write it in concrete yet.
>> let me interject this also. Are we given I guess a good ballpark idea of how many agency that's we contract with that actually do business with other governmental entities such as fellow or state or -- such as federal or state or someone else that actually require audits, do we have a listing of those? Per se? Those that require it, those that --
>> I would say most or all of them require an audit, yes.
>> most or all?
>> yes.
>> cost of doing business.
>> we have never authorized use of county funds to pay for the audit?
>> not directly.
>> and there's been a contract provision that disallows that?
>> what you saying --
>> the old provision said that the contractor had to provide the audit at their own expense.
>> because basically we are going to be using taxpayer money to track their money.
>> how much do the audits cost?
>> exactly.
>> depends on the size of the agency.
>> medium sized. Their budget is a million. That would be hard for me to say, my agency is over $3 million, the annual audit cost is between 8 and $9,000.
>> so if the audit is not paid for -- from the agencies that provide funding, how is the audit paid for?
>> I do not have a single funding source that does not require an audit and allow a pro rata portion of the audit expenses in administrative costs within that contract if I choose to include that in administration. That's just -- I'm just speaking for my own agency.
>> if we require it, then we ought to pay our part of it, I don't know that I like the idea of us having to pay more than our part.
>> absolutely.
>> but I would think that if you get state and federal funding, the amount that you get from them is probably more than you get from Travis County.
>> that's correct.
>> the city of Austin probably more than Travis County, also.
>> not in my case, I'm the exception.
>> administrative flip on here. That's different.
>> I think that you hit it right on the head. I certainly don't think that anybody would question if you have a percentage, I mean if that's -- if you follow, knew what we were talking about about a million bucks, funded 100,000, that's 10%, if the audit was, you know, 800 or $8,000 or whatever, 10% of that. But if we do it any other way, it gets back to what Commissioner Sonleitner was talking about, if we are going to pay more than our allotted percentage of money that we are putting in there, that's not right. I was entertained by looking at the list of -- of direct expense or admin -- administrative expenses and direct. [laughter] no that right there drives you to -- now that drives you to wondering, like that guy that calls you from the sheriff's department, wants a donation, you kind of go how much money is going to the cause? Because everybody gets --, you know, wants to cut to the chase and say what exactly is getting to the cause? I was really surprised that there was so much of the admin cost of the dollars that we appropriate -- of course, you know, if you are giving money to an agency, part of that running that -- what the service that they are providing is, you know, paying for administrative, I mean, paying for personnel and whatever, but I was really surprised about the difference between administrative and direct costs or where the dollars were getting to directly. I mean is the reason why we are even talking about this is because it's been so confusing up until 2003 is all of that -- had all of that always come out of administrative and we really didn't know?
>> I think some of it. It's not really a bad or a good. It's what we contract for and what we measure. For instance, if in fact we said we are contracting with an agency to -- to provide after-school care for 10 7-year-olds, we would pay them $100 a week, that kind of contract, we don't care what they pay for anything. We don't. All we care is that they document to us that they have gotten 7-year-olds in their program, must be absolutely documented and then we pay them $100 each. If one month they only have two, we only pay for two. If they say to us but, yeah, our administrative costs went on anyway, we say we don't care. That kind of contract is for services, regardless of what your costs are. And if you can't document that, in many of these contracts they have been written that way, then I think what the agencies have done, in hhs, I'm just guessing, have picked those things that they can document. So they are saying, okay, we are not entering a cost of service, we are -- we are asking for these things and you pay for them. The third -- so I mean I think that's kind of what some of these are.
>> that's actually what I said a moment ago.
>> right. The third is, which is what some of the agencies would like is that we kind of fund the agency. That is we just give them money and say go forward and do good. To my way of thinking the government cannot do that. Private individuals can. But we the government cannot do that. So we have to enter, you know, one of the other two kinds of contracts for documentation. If we pay for part of the audit, unless you intend to give them more money, what that means is we will be spending less Travis County money on something else, that's just what that means.
>> yeah.
>> but we have -- have we determined that the audit is absolutely necessary?
>> yes.
>> even if the other governmental entitys.
>> yes.
>> I think so. Government money --
>> may well be [multiple voices]
>> I think everyone agrees on that.
>> okay. If we have a provision basically Travis County authorizes use of its funds to pay a pro rata share of the audit costs, and leave it at that, then the -- then the agencies that don't get authorize from the state or feds or whoever the other funding entities are, are kind of left out in the cold? Right?
>> well, they have a mechanism to have money.
>> yeah, they have to go out and get --
>> I mean --
>> you want to leave them there?
>> maybe somebody pays and you take the revenue that is generated outside because if you've got an agency that isn't willing to give money for an audit, I mean, if you have an agency that's not a non-profit that's not generating any capital, where does it come from?
>> right.
>> you can tell at the end of the year you have to generate x amount of money to pay for the audit because the funding entities have disallowed it. But if the state and feds and others are saying it's okay for us to pull from the administrative costs a certain amount to cover the audit, then Travis County says whatever our pro rata share is, pull that much from ours, then you are on equal footing with all of them.
>> right. I can tell you the ones who are likely to get hurt are the smaller ones whose boards are not as active or productive.
>> or they just take out of the money allocated they set aside some money for the audit or the county puts additional money into social service contracts for the audits. If we want to make sure that the money that we allocate is really going for direct services, which is the basis of the partnership. Which is the basis for being partners. To be able to provide the services to our constituents that we would ordinarily do ourselves.
>> all I know is the 16.1.6 that marietta gave us does not reflect any of what we have been talking about in terms of it is way too use the word mushy in terms of all or part. It does not set forth the kinds of being more specific that we have been talking about. But it seems like --
>> I hope we can come up with new language --
>> seems like it's something close to contractor understands and agrees that a pro rata share of the audit expense is an allowable expense not to exceed the county's percentage of total funding.
>> okay.
>> it will be applied to the total amount of funding according to that agency. It's like if you want to use it, you can, but it cannot exceed -- it's a proper rat came, cannot exceed the percentage of funding for the whole agency. That way you give agencies a choice that you may use it. But only for our little portion. Or you don't have to. It gives permission. So there may be some agencies, I'm thinking, food bank, like two percent, such a small amount, they may say we got covered, we don't need it. We are going to put that more into direct services. Others may say that $800 means a whole lot to me, we may need to use that and so I -- it allows for the accountability of pro rata being very specific about that.
>> they would have to document that with hhs, they who at the contracts and they have determine the pro rata and sign-off on it.
>> my point though is how --
>> [multiple voices]
>> basically where the money comes from -- our contribution to the bill would be -- [multiple voices]
>> we may need to have an extra thing in there in terms of the documentation of how much the audit costs so --
>> yeah.
>> I think that can get us there. It's a may, not a must. But it's not a no.
>> if you would, if you also can look at the possibility of what kind of impact would that have on providing a direct service. In other words would this amount of money actually interfere with direct services, in other words since it's been applied to the auditing whereas it would have been applied to the direct service end, what kind of impact would that have on the persons that need the service? And I guess it depends on the amount of money and stuff like that. But it's -- it's taken away from that to be applied to administrative, that means somebody out there that were receiving the service before may not be able to get the full magnitude of that service because of an $800 hit or a $1,000 hit or whatever the amount of money would be. There has to be a give and take in this situation. But I'm just kinds of concerned about that.
>> country of the reasons why -- one of the reasons why Commissioner Sonleitner and I are going through these agencies, because I do think that there are a number of them that through some sort of consolidation -- let's face it, overhead is what it's all about. I mean, Commissioner Davis you are talking about if you are having to take money out for the audit, you're right. Dress somebody not getting the service because you are having to using those dollars administratively. But I don't -- I mean, I want to get to what I think the real issue here is for Travis County. I don't like getting put in a spot where somebody comes to us with a problem, says y'all kind of help fix this problem. I mean what we are really talking about is -- we have openly said, we think that we ought to -- our percentage of involvement with -- with a social agency ought to take on whatever our percentage that we are putting into that total budget.
>> that's fair.
>> you know what, there are five other funding agencies out there saying we don't do it. I don't want to have to feel guilty about, well, Travis County y'all help us find a way to do that because we get put in that too many way, too many other instances. We are willing to pay our way. We are willing to say okay here's what we are willing to do and take part of our contribution and use it towards the audit. So --
>> what it does leave it in the cold those who have been authorized by the other entities, but I guess they've been there before.
>> yes.
>> that means they have to generate the audit costs themselves.
>> uh-huh.
>> if we think that, at some point the queson for us would be how important is it to get it done. If you know a year in advance or close thereto, seems to me like you have to figure out a way to get it done.
>> they are having to do these audits. I'm not going to feel guilty for one second that the state of Texas won't give them any money for their audit or the feds won't. That is their issue. But we cannot be paying for the state and feds piece of the audit. We only do the pro rata piece, that at least covers our piece that we are trying to be fair.
>> are we [indiscernible] enough on it.
>> we can get that far.
>> you have the things in about the documentation.
>> yes.
>> overtime next?
>> yes, it is.
>> have we allowed overtime in the past.
>> no, we haven't.
>> the language proposed is necessary?
>> the language proposed is saying that we are allowing payment for --
>> what's the standard in Travis County for over time?
>> policy.
>> I know we discouraged overtime.
>> discouraged, must be approved in advance unless you have it built into your budget. If in fact you have it built into your budget, that's one thing. The problem with overtime costs of course it reduces direct services. In other words if a person makes $10 an hour, you get two hours for $20. You pay them time and a half, you get one hour or $15 and you're short for the second. To the extent that you are paying overtime, and you have a fixed budget, you are getting lesser hours, that's really --
>> the standard in Travis County is an emergency.
>> that's right.
>> an emergency as determined by -- by --
>> well the law requires us to come back to the office to tell the auditor, tell the court. Unbudgeted overtime is permitted in Commissioners court or an elected county district officereclares an emergency. If it is in fact budgeted -- okay, all elected and appointed officials executive managers and department heads are expected to manage their payroll budgets. Employees should not be authorized to work when there is not a budgeted and appropriation pay for that work unless there is an emergency. With the agencies basically we -- we have a salary line item. And --
>> is that an overtime line item?
>> no, we don't have an overtime line item. We could -- we could limit the amount of overtime that they should bill us for as long as it comes out at a salary line item.
>> can somebody tell me examples, because it has not come up in the discussion that's we've had with the agencies so far on site. When would overtime be a necessity?
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> so I think we're talking approximate a very small staff population that overtime would even be incurred on. And then secondly I think generally agencies have have internal policies that govern when overtime will be authorized. And I know in my agency our policy is similar to the county's, the overtime has to be preapproved. The staff person just cannot take it upon themselves to incur the overtime without some type of supervisory oversight. So I think that there are safeguards -- within a lot of the agencies that are under contract in terms of managing overtime. We recognize that. So that means you increase your cost of doing service and you need to make modifications to not incur that additional cost. In the budget the agencies have approved as part of their contract, the salary line item is capped at whatever the amount is approved for that line item. That does not get us out of the contractual obligation to have the level of service that the contract calls for. So if we run out of dollars in a line item and have not met the service provision requirement, we still have to make -- meet that service provision requirement. So the other sort of thing, not unlike the audit, in thoseinstances whereas an agency within internal policy we have to incur overtime and we work to manage that to minimize that, to us that seems like it should be an allowable expense because there is reasonable -- there are reasonable procedures in place to manage overtime.
>> under what you've written here under 14.5, I understand that we've put an actual inclusion in the budget. We do that with our own con tables and officers and know that there's going to be a certain kind of overtime. I understand c, which means if something happens, but I do not understand what b means or is supposed to cover.
>> what does b say? I've got the memo here, but I don't have that.
>> actually incurred --
>> I was that e-mail that we --
>> yes, sir.
>> actually occurred by the employee holding a position which is included in the budget for reimbursement by county funds as documented by a signed timesheet. Can we break that down into what we're trying to cover here, please?
>> I actually understand that. Believe it or not.
>> you can correct me if I don't say it the way you understand it. I think the concern was that there could be overtime invoices put in that perhaps we may have a salary for this position a. And that person -- but the overtime might really be related to the position b over here that isn't a county funded position. That overtime could be billed when it wasn't related to an already approved county funded salary line item.
>> if they're not doing business on behalf of us, the answer is we're not paying for any of it.
>> this just specifies that that's the way it needs to be, and that there won't be -- or if, say, position a is vacant for a month and then position b is filled, but we're running some overtime and they bill it and it's not shown, who -- whose overtime is it? And that individual who bills the overtime is indeed an individual, a position that is a county funded position. And that's all that's saying. And that would seem logical. You would almost say that goes without saying, but we have a lot of provisions in here that you might think would go into saying.
>> quowf got an a, b and c all connected by and. In the world of elgin bank, do you mean and in the budget and by a county employee and incurred?
>> yes, it has to be all three of those?
>> any more comments? We think that -- okay. So we believe that if necessary it's strong enough?
>> with the language that she mentioned, yes. We have prohibited it before.
>> if necessary to provide services to county residents.
>> proifs of services provided -- provision of services provided in this contract.
>> if necessary to provide direct services covered by this contract. How's that?
>> okay.
>> that way what we're trying to do is follow up on your example. We're trying to make sure that the service that triggers the overtime is direct service to a client.
>> uh-huh.
>> so overtime to get training in san antonio wouldn't be covered in that?
>> huh-uh.
>> how's that sound? It may be covered in our travel -- in the travel -- [ laughter ]
>> because then it seems like it more of an exception as opposed to a rule.
>> yeah. These are -- if the agencies are saying you ought to give us more money for these things, then the service is the same. If you're saying you can pay us, but this is all the money you're getting and we'll have less hours worked, that's just what you're thosing. It may be that they're more important. I don't know that.
>> but you're still having to provide all the services that the contract requires.
>> exactly. [overlapping speakers].
>> direct services language. Because I think the most typical example here is that there's a vacancy that's unfilled, goes unfilled for a while and then pretty soon either you hire a temporary or you use a current staff that covers them in the duties. So I'm sort of anticipating that before anything else.
>> an emergency.
>> but we're taking you at your word that most of the agencies really use overtime only as a last resort anyway, and it is more service related that we may be thinking.
>> absolutely.
>> and then we go back to the audit and make sure that the services that are part of the contract are indeed --
>> yeah, stephen's office is going to certify that.
>> what about travel?
>> we think travel is the ifiest because it's a high profile. We're really now making a big extension. First of all, they don't need to have it preapproved and they don't even have to work for that agency. I just think that there's a wide door of abuse. I'm not saying the agencies would abuse it, but it sure opens the door. Travel is just a touchy -- it a touchy issue because it's -- it can be abused so easily.
>> if we say you must be an employee or a volunteer performing services similar to what employees do, does that help? You took this from the child protective services part, right?
>> no. I would like to use an example not related to cps. The reason for that is we have a tight relationship with them in terms of what we do and working on this, and I would like to u a another agency. I think there might be examples, especially with some of the new best practices, where you would have family participants on board as volunteers where training is not discretionary, it actually required. So I think that it's permissible to have these either family members or board volunteers, but I think that the business has to be related to the services that we deliver. And something other than in a tan genital way.
>> or something related to the work of that board that they serve on.
>> it seems that -- the real question is when is the determination made and who makes it? Really that is the issue. I don't want to be making -- my people don't want to be making that determination after the travel and training has taken place. I mean, that's where the problems are. If you -- yeah. So someone in hhs in my opinion ought to look at that and make that determination before the travel rather than after, if there's any question about it. Because many of the people who have paid for travel, they think they're going to be reimbursed, they're not, they're angry, and that's why the county's travel policies are so tight, for the same reason, we want people to encem ber, we want to make sure there's money there so when they come back with the hotel bill, we have the money to pay them. It's that simple. We don't want people travelling, paying and not being able to reimburse.
>> lee, does that make sense? It seems most people would know if you're going to a conference more than 24 hours in advance to basically get preapproval on travel if you're asking for that to be reimbursed.
>> I think you could each back it up sooner than that. When you budget for your contract you should have a sense of the travel that's involved from the service. And that if you negotiate that travel as part of your -- the budget for your contract, then in my mind that is your approval. As long as you performed under that contract, I don't know why we would need to come back to get travel approved that was already approved as a line item in the budget that's part of your contract.
>> it's done that way.
>> if it's done that way, that makes sense. I always go to the cuc, urban policy conference every other year. And if that's already in my budget, I can see it.
>> that does it, otherwise any travel must be preapproved by the Travis County department of health health. Stephen, that's you or your designee. So your intention is to get that in your budget. If a unique training opportunity becomes available later on, we would expect you to get advance approval in writing from health and human services.
>> we're going to want something, like a volunteer. If diana runs an agency and they're going to new orleans for the weekend, I just might want to volunteer if they take me with them. I might. We see those kind of things, not in every agency, not in my agencies. We have seen those kind of things. We've seen county employees wanted to do the same thing. They think we ought to pay for golf tournaments. They do. They think that. And we don't.
>> other than Commissioner Daugherty. [ laughter ]
>> I wouldn't mean him, no. [ laughter ] all I'm saying is you always assume people are going to tell you this, but it sometimes doesn't happen. So I just think that you've got a line item for travel, but that really doesn't dictate who is going to travel. And you don't know that. As the year goes on, you look at travel and you see where people want to go. I just think -- some travel is so clear-cut. You know what it is. But I think that if the person does not work for the agency, there ought to be some preapprovals, I do, so we know who those people are and why they're going. And there may be a perfectly legitimate reason for them going, I'm not saying that there isn't. Jose is the one that looks at all this stuff.
>> when hear about budget and travel, usually in travel you only see a number. So far in the budget i've seen some social services, they don't even indicate anything. If they would say where they're going, fine. That's fine. They're going to this place, we'll reimburse them. But this budget is just one number. We don't know. We don't see it. I don't think hhs sees where they're going or what they're doing with those travels. So when they say budgeted, yes, it's budgeted, but where it goes we don't know.
>> we need a little form that says basically that captures the information we think we need. The kind of training it is, who's going and why.
>> and the consultant -- in the consultant they provide all the consultants, what they're going to spend it on. It's budgeted. Okay, fine. It goes on that way. If it's not there, then it's not reimbursed. Travel, same thing. If they know where they're going and they put it there, fine. You have the approval according to the budget. But if they don't, you don't have it. The other key to this is they have a liability to transfer 10% of their budget between line items and categories, then they could easily transfer some into that travel.
>> but you also have monitors that are looking at this. I think that --
>> it's going to be after the fact. That's what we've been seeing.
>> basically if you answer that truthfully and we do rely on it, then you ought to be all right. And if that's not true later, then you're fraudulent. So I think we ought to use that against you at the next funding. But somebody should know in advance during the budget deliberation and you can negotiate it, if there are specifics that we need, you don't have the specifics at that time, but you get if your budget before you use the money, you ought to give us the specifics that we need. Midyear some opportunity comes up that you think is too good to turn down and you come and get preapproval, then we have a form that basically says this is the information we think we need to determine that it's related to your mission of providing certain services to Travis County residents and that this particular -- most of this travel is for training? That this training is necessary for you to carry out your job duties or volunteer responsibility.
>> okay.
>> even if you're a parent, we consider you to be a volunteer. I mean, I --
>> let me make sure I understand what you're saying. You're saying that if it's not in the budget --
>> to get in the budget, we ought to have specific information. That's your point, right, jose?
>> right.
>> to the extent you know that up front, give it to us. If you don't know it up front, but are able to get set amount of money, then it seems to me that we ought to expect you to come back before the training to tell us who is going, what the training is, how the training is related to what they do and provide services for Travis County. General questions I think the answer to which you really ought to provide anyway. And what it means too is I guess if there's a substitution, if in -- in your budget you think john doe is going, but john's not with the firm and you need to get the training, then you ought to get somebody else certified to substitute because we want to know what ha person's relationship is with the agency. All this seems to be logical to me. It ought to be what the agencies are doing anyway. The question is how do we get in writing this information that we can rely on later on. And the other thing is we've had a few examples of where people have gone off, gotten this training and had a hard time getting reimbursed and in some cases it's been a substantial amount of money.
>> or lag time. It may be approved, but eight weeks on meals...
>> if I was one of the volunteers or employees, I want want to know up front that I was going to be reimbursed.
>> so it can be up front, in your budget if we have the informational ready to be able to load it into the budget because we know basically what's going to be done, otherwise you have to get preapproval, and we're still going to be asking for the same information that's going to have to be preapproval.
>> what I have in mind is a one pager that has --
>> what I was going to ask is we have the consultant form now, so if we develop a one-page form like that and say that if this has been completed and it's in there with the budget, that it's approved. If you simply have a budget amount approved, then that form has to be turned in and preapproved by the department before the travel actually happens. Is that what --
>> it's kind of like our encem brans forms, where are you going, how many days will you be gone? You might know the airfare.
>> so what -- [overlapping speakers]
>> wait a minute.
>> you either need to fill it out so it can be included in your contractual budget or you fill it out during the year when you find out, ah, I do need to do this. So it's either preapproval or it's --
>> that will do it.
>> all right.
>> let me say something here. And stephen, I don't remember you discussing these issues with me before, but the memo says that all members of the court met with you.
>> not that I --
>> no, bu this isn't so. I was not aware of these issues.
>> what are you talking about? I didn't -- where may my memo did I say I met with all members of the court?
>> that was not accurate.
>> but that's not exactly right. You're right, I didn't know. I didn't meet with you about these issues.
>> it's a misunderstanding. I didn't meet with all members of the court. As a matter of fact, I didn't set up specific members' meetings to talk about this specifically. I did mention it to a couple of folks as a part of another meeting, and I tried to walk in the Commissioner Daugherty's office when he wasn't there, but no, I didn't set up meetings specifically to meet about this.
>> well, the part that Commissioner Gomez is talking about is confusing because it does state that that was -- however that got addressed and passed on to us, it was sort of confusing.
>> yeah, because I didn't.
>> the staff in your office?
>> yes.
>> you might want to sit on this one.
>> in our current contracts, when an agency purchases equipment, non-expendable equipment, computer, printer, that sort of item, they are supposed to send my office a copy of that purchase order so that we can go out and tag that equipment. At the end of the contract that equipment comes back to the county. The department wanted to have a dollar limit at $5,000 that if anything under 5,000 was purchased, it just stayed with the agency. If it was over 5,000 it comes back to us. And I disagreed with that. I feel like that if we're buying non-expendable equipment, computers, printers, fax machines, furniture, that that is our property and should come back to us at the end of the contract. And that's -- we just need the court to decide --
>> I didn't know that we were allocating money for that purpose. I thought it was for services, direct services only.
>> do we? I didn't know we did either.
>> the philosophy and the way we have always approached our contracts is that we are purchasing services, we are not funding agencies. However, if you have a contract such as we have that is anything short, I think of a fee for service, then your practice should back off of that philosophy slightly because you are looking at rent, you are looking at salaries, you are looking at things that are administrative costs as a part of purchasing those services. We are not paying $10 an hour for child care and you tell us how many hours and we pay you $10. We don't have that set up yet. We are going to be trying to work on that with contracts that are amenable it, agencies that are ready for it, but right now that's not the way the contracts are set up. So the philosophy, the intent is to purchase services, but the way that is billed is billed base on an approved budget. And that these are thing that we see as costs, but if you want to look at the monies in the pot, the services are being provided, but we are asking for that to be attributed to a budgeted item that we have approved, that we will pay. So you have kind of a hybrid. It like suzanne was explaining before, there's two types, you could do a fee for service, you could do an approved budget type billing. So yes, we are paying -- w are purchasing services, that is our intent, but the way we determine how we pay for those services is to connect our payments to an approved budget. That's approved beforehand. So you have a hybrid there. You have a combination of your purchasing the services, but the way you're determining the payments is according to a budget. So that's how we get into all of these details as to agencies' budgets.
>> I copied you on a memo that I wrote to the judge in response to questions that he asked. That was dated January the 8th that outlines that in writing where philosophically yes, we say we are purchasing services, but when we look at how we're billed, we're billed relating to specific line items within a budget. The goal is to actually move closer to a fee for service methodology. And in talking with susan, the auditor -- in early discussions we talked about the possibility of doing a percentage of the agencies to ensure that we got the methodology down. If we're shifting totally to a fee for service. That's really why we're talking about a lot of the details related to these contracts, because of that.
>> well, we obviously have moved from the original --
>> right. A lot of times in the original one, here's your total and we give you a 12th of that each month. That's the way it was -- we kind of went that way. And we're doing better, but any time -- if someone figures a a fee for service, they're going to figure in, well, we're going to have to buy computers, we'll have to pay rent. That will be figured in to the cost that they give you for their unit of service.
>> and the only -- and the other thing about that, if we do have a unit cost, we can compare what agency -- you get back to administrative costs. Are they spending 50% of the money on administrative or are they spending 50% on direct costs. And you can compare which agencies are doing a better job of lowering their administrative costs and providing direct services. But we got off the subject of the inventory and whether we want that property to be ours or not.
>> can I make one more statement that's actually related to what you just said? We're tracking both performance as well as tracking line items witn a budget. So you're getting both. It's not that we're doing this in lieu of direct services because in these contracts he's held to the performance measures in the contract. But we're saying you're going to deliver ese performance measures, but we're only going to allow you to spend the money in certain cagories and in a certain way.
>> I understand that, but I think it goes to further than that. And that's when there was the legal opinion issued about how we could get them to go into contracts with outside agencies, and I thought that -- and obviously that's changed, but i'd like to see if we still need to cyst through the original reason for contracting with agencies. And that was to deliver the services to clients or to constituents that the county would do ordinarily.
>> and we are still doing that. Stephen was saying we can deny payment because something's not in the budget. We can deny payment because the agency didn't deliver the services.
>> because if we continue doing it the way we are, then we're kind of like departments then. It's no longer a contract with an agency to deliver a service that the county ordinarily would.
>> it's both. They do have to deliver services that the county ordinarily would. If we only contract with agencies for services, we are authorized to provide.
>> what's the law on it? Is it ours by law?
>> there's not a law in use of county money to acquire equipment. It not county money for those counties, it's -- we've taken -- it like when we hire a contractor to build a building. He has to build the building. We don't care whether the dollars we paid him to build the building got spent to buy equipment or pay salaries or a vacation to the bahamas as long as he's building the building.
>> oh, we do care. [ laughter ]
>> if we get the building that we contracted for.
>> we don't care what he spends the money on, on anything, as long as we got the service or the commodity that we contracted for. So these agencies have contracted to provide a service, and we pay them to provide that service. We may have contracts set up so that we control how they spend the dollars, but we don't have to have contracts set up to control how we spend the dollars. What we have to do is make sure that we are getting a service which is equivalent to the amount of dollars we pay them.
>> what was in the contracts before?
>> basically that if they bought expendable equipment, that it was ours, that we retained title of it after the contract ened.
>> expendable equipment.
>> not expendable, sorry.
>> regardless of the amount of cost?
>> regardless of cost. There was no dollar limit capped. They're wanting to add a 5,000-dollar cap. If it's less than 5,000, they can keep it. But if it's more than 5,000, it comes back to us. And as you know, computers, laptops are now --
>> there's a 2,500-dollar limit on the computers and stuff? > do the agencies recycle them, sell them at public auction? What do agencies do with the -- let's say that you buy a computer, it becomes outdated, look at it one day and say, oops, we've got to replace this, what do they do with the old one?
>> it depend on the fund that were used to purchase the equipment.
>> let's say Travis County money was used to buy it.
>> Travis County funds were used to purchase the equipment, then we talk with the county to seek their advice in terms of what to do with the outdated equipment.
>> and I can tell you those conversations -- I have never gotten a purchase order from a social service agency or equipment back. So those decisions, if what he says is the process, they've been discussing that with the department and not us. We've never gotten any back.
>> so if they want to trade in two computers to acquire a new one and apply whatever the value of two old ones was the new one, we'd have that kind of deal, wouldn't we?
>> I don't know. We haven't been addressing that situation.
>> if a specific agency went out of business and there was a whole lot of equipment that belonged to the state, city and county, it seems like we would require you to pass it on to another nonprofit agency that provides social services to Travis County residents or we ought to help you sell that and take that money and put it back into social services, something like that I can see, but I don't know that I want to treat that piece of equipment the same way we would if it were in my office. If it's in my office it's easy for us to track. I assume we have not tracked this historically. You're saying we need tighter controls than we've had to this point.
>> we have new language that goes more that direction.
>> I don't have it with me.
>> what does the language say?
>> the new language says that as a part of the consideration of the contract that the title in the capital acquisition in the contract or as long as it's continued to be used for our services. If the contract is terminated, we said that it had to continue to be used for our service for at least one year. After that most of this -- I think the thought for that is that it going to depreciate so much or be so out of date. But the title to the equipment was best for them as long as it's used for our services. And then for a year after. And then after that the tracking, the inventory would probably not be worth the effort for the contract or the contract. These -- or the county. These are usually not big dollar items.
>> what if we put in a provision that says that if you try to do some of these before the equipment is four years old, then you must contract --
>> 24 months.
>> then you must contact Travis County to reach an agreement about disposition. Do you see what I'm saying?
>> uh-huh.
>> and what I'm thinking there is that the newer it is, the more valuable it probably is. After that this provision makes sense. But my language would discourage going out and buying expensive computer equipment and then a year later thinking that you've got advances and what about that? That's not quite the same as you were saying. It seems to me that this is an area where I don't know if we want to necessarily invite other headaches, but we ought to tighten certain language.
>> and track. We don't know where monies going on a lot of this stuff. If they're buying equipment, I don't know about it because I'm -- they're not following the current procedures or contract clause anyway.
>> I think that was part of the intent is when we had this orientation and it came up to say, one, we are going to be enforcing what we have in there, so we're going to make provisions that are enforceable and helpful. And so I think that -- I think this would accomplish that.
>> we've got to have some kind of language that allows somebody too, within their budget, buy equipment, if that's what it's going to take if lee has given us as an example of whatever it takes to get the job done for the dollar amount that's agreed to. I don't want to make this so onerous because we just approved a list earlier today in termdz of the stuff we're getting ready to auction off. The stuff has no value. So I don't want to make it so cranky that it's not easy for these agencies to keep track of this stuff. So try to find that middle someplace that basically says -- and I like this idea of as long as you keep using this and then for at least a year after we would terminate or end any kind of rep. You already have some language in here which I like which says if you are yoing to use something that we pay for as a trade-in or you sell it, the proceeds may only be used to replace the equipment for similar use. And I like that a lot. So that --
>> I like it too.
>> that encourages if you have the cranky old computer and you want to get a new one, sell the old one an apply it to a new one.
>> any objection to my 24 month time limit?
>> I like that.
>> 24 months is fine.
>> not 24 years, Commissioner. [ laughter ]
>> any more discussion today? [ laughter ]
>> very good.
>> lee, are we getting there in terms of working with the agencies that we're trying to find that little ground? Are there any other issues that you need to bring forward or have we covered them all today?
>> I believe we've covered them all today.
>> I want to make sure that asha was covered.
>> thank you very much. Thank you for your input.
>> stephen, I just think this kind of stuff needs to be a little clearer so it doesn't leave any wrong impressions.
>> okay.
Last Modified: TUesday, January 21, 2004 8:25 AM