Board of County Commissioners Business Meeting - workshop

Good afternoon, everyone. We are here for our afternoon meetings. We are going to initially have a drop-in on MOU approval, but we'll go around the room with introductions. Commissioner Jeff Baker.

Michelle Halstead, Commissioner's Office.

Rhonda Fields, Commissioner.

Alec McCord, Person of Order. Kerry Warren-Gully, Commissioner.

Jessica Campbell, Commissioner of District 2.

Tiffany Blue, County Attorney's Office.

Sergeant Wood, Arapahoe Sheriff's Office. Bureau Chief Kent McClellan, Arapahoe Sheriff's Office.

Rob Prevost, Human Services.

Dan McKelkey, Human Services.

Leanna Quinn, Finance.

All right, and just for the record, Chair Summey is absent and excused. So we are going to go into the MOU approval, so come on up.

Hopefully mine will be easy today. Not that we don't enjoy.

Every time you say that, you know it arises suspicious.

I jinx it. I brought Brady Wood with us. He's our new traffic sergeant. How long have you been there?

A month?

Not even a month.

Congratulations.

That's fantastic.

He will be helping Darren and I do all things traffic. So what we're here for today is we want to enter into an MOU with the Colorado State Patrol. to do something we have not done as best we can recall since 2014 or 15, which is commercial motor vehicle inspections. That is a process that is done cooperatively with CSP port of entry folks and basically looks for equipment related issues on commercial type motor vehicles. I don't really know why. We tried to figure out in the history other than we didn't have the resources at the time to do it. But now with the expansion, adding the county positions we've added to traffic, city has added some too. It's kind of a situation of as we have more resources, we need to provide more thorough services. This is a bigger issue out east in Commissioner Baker's area than it is in town because of the Roadway and basically what it is, as Brady and I were talking before we came in here, the over the road truckers that go state to state are inspected at weigh stations and so on. They're generally pretty compliant. But all these rules exist both for safety, if trucks are overweight and improperly equipped, the stopping distances, right, if they go to have to apply their brakes and so on, it can be a very dangerous situation. And then the other part is the wear and tear on our roads, which has particularly been an issue out east in parts of rural Arapahoe County. That's what this idea is for. We have to do that before we can send the initial two people to their training that State Patrol provides. There's no cost for any of this. And then they generally coordinate these inspections at which our folks will participate. And once we're part of the program, we can host locations where they come bring their resources to do things in Arapahoe County again. we anticipate over time as we go we're going to start out with our county folks that we're going to expand this and there'll be a couple of city guys that'll come on board too to be vehicle inspectors so we'll answer any questions i have a couple i'll start it's okay um when you find violations for these

Is the driver cited or is the company, if it's commercial, I mean like a trucking company, are they cited and is it all a ticket or could there be an arrest?

From my understanding, and I'm very minimally informed on this since we haven't done it in so many years, my understanding is most of the time the driver gets the citation. A lot of times the company is responsible for fixing it if there is a company. Some of these are just one-off. They run their own truck. They're independents. They're running their own truck and trailer. And some of those, especially the ones that stay within the state, don't adhere to the rules as much as those over-the-road truckers. They get inspected way more. All the resources that stop them in pretty much every state and contact them. Overall, it's going to be the driver's responsibility, but my understanding is there's no type of jailing for any of this. Okay. Excellent.

I can't think of one that isn't a citation. It just depends who the citation goes to. And it's kind of like your plate, right? Like some things in normal traffic law, it's for the registered owner of the vehicle. and other things. You know, if I'm speeding, it's me as the driver. If my plates are expired, that's my job as the registered owner to renew the plates.

And the last question is, is this at all related to what we've seen in the news about Secretary Besson? Is it Besson? Or somebody at the federal level talking about truck drivers having to speak English Any immigration aspects?

They're all equipment issues?

They're not solely. You have to have a commercial license. You have to have the correct license. Okay. But that's issued by the state, so that has nothing to do with us. There's no immigration or anything, any of those kind of checks on any of these. Okay. So this is 100%. Is it safe to be on the road? Is their load safely attached? Is it going to come off? Overall, that's the goal of this, and to make sure they don't damage our roads.

They're not done in cooperation with federal agencies. There are DOT standards. Colorado, like most states, has adopted. So you're conforming to DOT safety standards, but they're not participating. The people on the ground doing it will be Colorado State Patrol, who's bound by the same state laws we are, and our folks. Aurora does participate. Adams County does as well. So in theory, you could have, like if we did something out east, I would imagine you'd have the...

people from up to those four agencies represent thank you I don't have any other questions I understand the expansion aspect of why you would think that this is important but I'm wondering if you can give insight into what the demands or what you expect it will help improve as it relates to public safety are you seeing increased violations of That is the motivation behind doing this. Just give me a little background on why we're doing this now and after having this long gap of not doing it.

So both in Commissioner Baker's area and a little bit in Commissioner Sumney's, we've had reports of commercial vehicles running up down the roads. Are they safe? Are they not safe? Without having the certification in this, there's really no way for us to take any enforcement action or to even know. That's what you learn in that additional training, what those standards are specific to those large larger commercial vehicles, which is what you're doing in most cases, right? Like dump trucks and up delivery trucks, box trucks, semi trucks, and so on and so forth. That's where we get the majority of the complaints. So prior to that, we've just kind of said in the unincorporated areas, we just refer it to State Patrol. One of my priorities being chief has been, especially as we've looked at trying to expand resources that we have, particularly on the corridors, to bond a little bit with our State Patrol brethren. So the captain out there and I have had a few coffees, and, you know, what could we do better to work together? Obviously, as a state agency, they're not very highly resourced. They haven't added, like, rogue troopers in years. You know, they add folks from the Capitol or whatever, but not the actual folks. So the guys out there cover basically E-472 pass alignment, right? And they have, like, I think it's eight. troopers right around the clock so anything we can do together we've done a couple things dy evenings where they've targeted out there we've done them jointly with them so that's another part of it too is trying to work cooperatively with them so we're not just hey man can you come do a commercial thing for us up here in this area and then they're like yeah well you know we're participating in it they're more likely to go sure we'll send two guys if you guys could

And so what happens today?

We just ask them, can you guys come do this? And if they can or do...

They have to come out to service.

And it's all them, and we don't assist in it in any way. So it's kind of the kindness of their hearts if they feel like...

I got it. Thank you.

...doing how much attention we get versus other requests.

Okay, that explains it. Thank you. Commissioner Ward.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, I know that Commissioner Baker asked the question, but are there fees or is it just, you just write them a ticket? I mean...

Some have set fines, others are mandatory court appearances, so there will be a range of fines, just like other parts of the traffic code.

Okay.

So it just depends. Some are penalty assessments where it's a fee that's assessed against them.

And would we receive those or would the...

They're all state tickets, so they go, we get whatever the small percentages are.

Yeah, they're state tickets, but they would go through county court.

Right.

Okay. So there's no necessarily recouping of any funds or anything per se?

Not that I know of, no. Okay.

Thanks. Mine is similar, Vane. So in the fiscal impact, it says this training may have minimal cost to become certified. Let's start there. So does it have, do the classes have cost or do they not?

The only cost is the staff time of the deputies attending.

Okay. And then it requires little to no additional equipment to get started.

Correct, because they already have the port of entry equipment as long as we're doing these jointly with Colorado State Patrol. If we were ever to get to a point, I know somewhere in one of our garages, we have like an old set of scales. They're not good anymore from 20 years ago when we used to do it. If we were to do our own completely independently, they still have to be scheduled with and approved by, the office is called Port of Entry. It has to be approved by the Port of Entry Office of State Patrol. We could, in theory, do one on our own, and either if we had the equipment, use our own equipment, or borrow theirs. But again, if you're borrowing, it's, oh, sorry, we can't give you that that day. Adams County's using it. So we used to have scales and a couple other. Some of it's silly stuff, like I remember a dipper years ago when I was a deputy, Matt Schmischne, he always wanted to get, I think it used to be the highest fine if you use red diesel. You guys know what that is? Ag diesel in a truck on the roadway that's not plated as ag. It's like a $15,000 fine. It's a huge no-no. I vaguely remember my grandfather... telling me that back in the day, we could put it in the tractors, we could put it in the stuff, but...

Subsidized fuel.

Yeah, it's very regulated. It has to be farm plated or so on. So that was a big thing. One of the tests was you dipped this little dipper into the gas tank and looked at it to make sure it wasn't red.

Okay, so that's... So one of the reasons... Okay, so there are scheduled inspections, but then there's also during patrol, if you're getting a report of somebody like, hey, is this safe or not? It seemed like you were describing a situation where one of our guys might call state patrol and say, hey, can you come look at this truck?

You can work two ways.

Okay.

You could say have a pre-planned event, so they have to do so many inspections per year to maintain their certification. You could say, like right now I know there's an area outside of Bennett where they always complain about the, I think they're all dump trucks. They're moving some kind of dirt or sand and how many are following the rules and how many aren't. So you'd work with State Patrol, we're going to set up on that road, and then they're going to pull over all these trucks. It's part of their commercial motor vehicle driver's license responsibilities. Pull them all over, you weigh them, you check them, you make sure they're log books, all that stuff's correct. Issue any citations, that's one way. The other way is you're just out driving around, you're on County Road 30. you see one in front of you and it's like parts are falling off or his load's not covered or whatever you pull them over and you say well i'm not a commercial motor vehicle but one of the guys dominic conta just got certified um you know he's in bennett right now hey dominic come down here and you want to take a look at this and then he's got the additional training to know what what to look for if that makes sense if he doesn't have scales or something obviously he can't weigh it but a lot of the equipment violations you know mirrors i mean it's everything you could possibly imagine okay um

So, okay. The only, the, the, I hear what you're saying in terms of, you know, because obviously we've been trying to work with you all to help get staffed up and to help manage the growth, especially out east and the activity in Kimish and Arsomi's district. My only sort of, I guess, question or concern is just We don't have you fully staffed up yet out there. And so what demand will this put on the time of the folks that we do have scheduled? And how will that impact shifts and scheduling and all of that?

So this is confined to the traffic unit. That's what we'll be doing it, not the patrol deputies who handle the calls. So if you remember right, the plan was to eventually get to six county traffic deputies. We're at four currently. I believe three are filled. We have one that's currently vacant, hopefully not for much longer. And then we added the half for parking.

Yeah.

He's also writing some tickets and doing some work up in your area at West. He's been out there as Commissioner Sundays. So by doing it that way, it's basically an enhancement. It doesn't take away from handling 911 calls or response times or anything like that. It helps them because they can schedule, generally speaking, schedule the point of entry, port of entry events that they're going to do when they're otherwise not occupied. And again, they're not, you know, it's like for four hours we're going to go over here with State Patrol and check trucks and then issue whatever citations, do whatever enforcement, then you're done, then you resume your normal duties for the rest of the day.

Okay.

Probably go wash your hands because you do get filling.

Yeah, of course. And then obviously out driving around, the instruction, I mean, like you were saying, we don't have the scales and all of that. But they would just be looking for the things that we can look for at that point.

Yes, in which case it would enable them to do what they currently can't do because they don't have the training or expertise.

I get that. And I very much see the benefit there. Okay, great. Thank you.

Any other questions? All right, thumbs up. You've got four thumbs up.

Thank you all.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Go forth and inspect. See, not bad. Not bad.

Darren and I were going to bring him just because he's never been to one.

I will say, I've got to tell you, when I drive back to Kansas, you get on I-70 there, on the V-470, and I feel like you're taking your life in your own hands, man. It is.

It's true.

Well, we had Bennett days this weekend. Some of the trucks that were there, we were just looking at them like, oh, that's sketchy as hell. But, again, you know, State Patrol's off doing the highway like if we had the ability to.

That loves a lot. And Bennett, I was amazed. There must have been 200 tractor trailers in there.

Have you seen the new Maverick and Deer Trail yet?

No.

No. That's impressive. So we're going to get some activity out there. Well, thank you all. Thank you. Have a pleasant afternoon.

Congratulations again.

Thank you. He thinks. All right. He's not sure yet.

Yeah. Yeah.

We are going to transition to a study session on potential impacts of payment error rate changes on the SNAP program. both here but we also added uh acting county attorney john christopherson for the record and so welcome and i'll turn it over to you dan

Good afternoon, Board. I'm going to keep my remarks very short. Bob Prevost is going to be doing the presentation today. He is the person who oversees the day in and day out, and we are very, very fortunate that he works for us because he's helping us figure out how to work our way through this and out of this. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bob.

All right, we do have a... We know how to do that.

And it will show the picture, I think, better than I can speak to it. So, yeah. The picture's worth a thousand words, right?

I wish I could tell you. You want me to share?

Huh?

On her screen. I don't know if she has it.

She has it. She has it. She just had it.

Oh, it's, yeah, we just have to bring it up. Oh, okay.

Did you provide it? I did, yeah.

I think she has it. She has it. She has it up already, I think, so it's.

Oh, there she is.

So what, like that? Yeah, that's it.

Oh, that one?

Hey, look.

Oh my God, I knew something was going to happen. I pushed a button, yay.

Here you go if you want to scroll through it. Perfect, thank you. So this first screen is the interview letters that we send out. So I just want to show the difference. Do you want me to cheat a little bit more? Okay, yeah, so the payment error rate For Colorado, well, nationally, it has to be below 6% or states incur a fine, a penalty, if you will. 6% to 7.99% is 5% of your federal allocation. So Colorado gets $1.4 billion. So we're talking tens of millions of dollars, $70 million. If you're between 8% and 9.99, it's a 10% penalty, so $140 million. 10 to 13.3 is 15%, and then anything over 13.3, gets kicked down the road for a few years. So that's like the Alaska rule because their payment error rate is like 40%.

Wow.

So that's where we're starting with. Colorado last year came in at 10.09. So that would be a 10% or $140 million fine. So what the state's proposing is that... The state would pay 60%, and counties would pay 40% of that fine. So for Arapahoe County, if it's a 5%, somewhere between 6% and 8%, somewhere around $6 million. If it's the 10%, then it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million. The county would be obligated to pay our 40% share of the state's. Total obligation? Yeah. So that's, I mean, it's a huge amount of money that we're looking at. So efforts have been undertaken for this entire past year trying to figure, solve this payment error rate to see what it looks like, how can we reduce it. So we've really dug into the weeds trying to figure this out as well. And what we found is there's discrepancies between state policy and state QA. Both run by the state. And so this first screen just shows you the interview letter we send out. We may ask you for certain things. It's kind of the interview letter. State policy, or state QA. They're not so nice. They said, we want all of these documents. You have to provide them. And if you don't provide them, then the state will close your case down. And we get that regularly. We just got one at the end of last week where the state said, hey, they're failing to cooperate. Shut them down. So we have to ask and we have to accept what they give us. And state QA says, nope, you give us exactly what we want, or we're shutting you down. So this next screen.

Bob, can I just say something?

Because there are cases where your benefits.

No more benefits.

For that individual?

Correct. Oh, shutting you down.

Okay, got it.

Okay, got it. What Bob is talking about is what you all have probably heard about as far as There are some issues around self-attestation, meaning that they can come in and say, this is my income.

And that's what this screen will show you.

And that's a problem.

So this is client declaration or self-attestation. On the left is policy says where we have to accept client attestation. So you'll see that list on the left. on the right side is what state qa accepts as client adaptation oh my gosh so when you get to disability household composition living arrangements shelter expenses all of those things whatever the client tells us we have to say is true and so that's what we act on but when state qa gets involved other than address agency and citizenship They require verification of everything else. So if you can imagine the position that we are in, where a client comes in and says, I pay $700 a month in rent. We say, okay, $700 a month in rent is what we give you credit for. Well, State QA comes in, and this is an actual case. They came in and found it's actually a mortgage that people pay $1,922 a month. So the county made a $1,222 error because the client didn't realize how much their mortgage was. So that hits us on our payment error rate. So we can't ask for that shelter expense. It's not on the list, and we're not allowed to ask for verification. The state QA will ask for verification every single time. So the discrepancy between policy and QA, both at the state level, is that extreme.

Well, can I ask a question? Mr. Chair? Yes, please. So the QA that the state uses, is that what the feds then use? So the feds require all of this stuff. It's a state decision to say that we don't have to require all those things at the county level.

Yeah, the state of Colorado asked for a waiver so we can get more folks onto the program. Because when we, historically when you're really, really tight with our program and we verify everything, like during the Hickenlooper administration, we were running at about 42% of eligible folks were actually enrolled. And now we're double that, we're in the mid 80s. So we relaxed a lot of these requirements so more people will have access to the benefits.

Okay, thank you.

And then to show you kind of where Verification is needed. This is the policy and that's the QA. So if there's an issue that we identify, and we got hit on one of these earlier this year, the client said she was a US citizen born abroad. So during the interview, we said, okay, it looks like you claimed you were a citizen born abroad. Where were you born at? She said, oh, I clicked the wrong button. I was actually born in the United States. So we said okay, their citizenship is fine and we moved on. State QA say nah, because there was that issue, you should have asked for verification. That became an error for us. because we didn't believe she clicked the wrong button. And it turned out that she was frauding the system. She was not a U.S. citizen, so she shouldn't have been on. But for my staff to say, was it unreasonable for somebody to say that they clicked the wrong button? Is that an unreasonable answer? Not really. So we didn't look at it more in depth. And we also get hit with interest dividends, things like that. And that's one of the bigger problems we're facing right now is When clients report to us another case that we have a payment error rate on, the client did not disclose they had daycare expenses during the interview. So when state QA went out and interviewed them, they said, yeah, I have daycare expenses. Well, that's an error because we didn't give them credit for their daycare expenses, even though they didn't tell us they had child care expenses. Or they could have gotten it after the interview.

Yeah.

So these are just some of these. We've had 78 cases sampled, but I just wanted to give you a few examples.

Can I just say, so we have 78 cases pulled. There are counties across Colorado who have had zero pulled. Zero. So I personally, not a math person, but statistically I don't see how we could have 78 pulled and some counties have zero pulled if it's truly as random as they say that it is.

What the state tells us about that is, is that if Yuma County only has 40 cases, even to pull one case, it's not statistically valid, and supposedly you'd be able to potentially figure out who that person is. is that you pull just from identifying factors and everything. That's kind of what they said, right?

That is what they say.

Okay.

That is what they said.

But one of the things that I think that Dan and Bob have talked about that would be a really good strategy was, well, why wouldn't they just set up regions and test regions? Because the rurals are telling us we shouldn't have to pay anything in this error rate penalty because we don't have any errors. No, that's not true. You just aren't yet.

They don't look at you So I've listed a few examples another part of the issue for us is Again when the state QA finds claim errors that the client didn't report to us So there's no way we could have got it right, right? And then the county being the responsible party for the error instead of the client when the client fails to report accurately. There's no way for us to know, again, what their mortgage payment is or what their rent payment is. So like this November, this first one of $258, state policy is that if this person is an ABOD, an able-bodied adult without dependent children, experiencing homelessness. So they have an exception to the work requirement rule if they're either homeless or transitioning out of being homeless. So that's with this client. This client was transitioning from being homeless, and so we gave her the exemption. She doesn't have to cooperate with the work requirements until she's stable. The state didn't see it that way. Our state QA didn't see it that way. They said, no, you still should have... Even though she reported two weeks' worth of earnings, you should have extrapolated that to a month's worth of earnings, even though she's homeless, and that prevented her from being able to be fully employed. So we have the state policy, and we implemented the state policy for that, and state QA said it didn't matter, right? You still made an error. So again, the difference between policy and QA comes back and bites us all the time. Let's see. Some of these are legit, like we felt in Medicaid Part B. That's an error. I mean, it's really a complicated program. It's a very small error. This one, 288, for not telling us the truth about being a citizen. The state said that's an agency error, not a client error. We disagree. So Dan and I have met with the state once. We're going to meet with them again. So when you look at the totality of what's gone on so far, we've had 20 errors. Out of the 25 were below the threshold. They were so small that they didn't count against us or the clients. Leaving 15, we've had seven. The clients have had eight. Of the seven errors that we've made, three of them are attributed to the agency that really should have been attributed to the client. So realistically, we've had four that we could have probably done better at. Of the 78?

Yeah. Okay.

As you'll see, a client error, $65 for failing to report income. We're not allowed to verify income. Yeah.

Unless someone, unless you have a concern that someone is reporting something that doesn't, that could be fraud. But how would we know that? How would we know? We have had people who have created their own pay stubs. There is technology to do all of these things. The state is not allowing us to use that technology, but the QA department uses that technology. So that's a really important, I think, thing for you all to know is that state program says you can't verify using the technology, but state QA uses the technology on every single case.

State QA doesn't even ask the client for their income. They just use the technology solution. We're not allowed to use the technology solution. We have to ask the client. Is that legislative? No. I mean, can we change legislation?

Should we?

There's currently the state program is asking the Attorney General's office for an opinion on whether or not we can or can't. The federal rule is silent on it because when the federal rule is written, you didn't have the technology. But if the state QA department can use the technology to verify someone's income without their permission, why would the state program have to seek permission in order to do the same exact thing? Which is why Bob, so Bob's right, this is our second time. We did it yesterday. Sent an email to all the bosses on both the QA side and the program side and said, You put us in a situation where we have an impossible decision to make, and you're making it so Colorado is going to suffer these enormous penalties based off of program decisions versus policy decisions, and they do not match. And so we're about ready to have our second meeting. They don't agree or disagree with us, but we continue to put it on the record that you're pulling an abnormal amount of cases from Arapahoe County and you are holding us to a standard that we'll never be able to make or meet because the two policies do not match.

Yeah, we can't utilize the tools.

In the air yesterday, I had to read it three times. So the person reported their income and transitioning out of homelessness. So again, the policy, they get a waiver for that. They are working with Volunteers of America who are trying to get them housed. And Voluntary of America sent a letter on their letterhead saying that, yeah, they're working with this person. As soon as they become housing stable, they have employment services that they are required to participate with, and they have lifestyle classes. So we used that information to say, okay, it's approved. And the state QA said that we did not verify. They called Voluntary of America, and they said, oh, we haven't offered those classes in a long time. So they said the agency should have verified that the Volunteers of America was actually conducting those classes and how many hours they were seeing clients each month. That's not something that we do is verify a community partner or a non-government organization that they're actually living up to their mission and vision statement. We don't do that. The client provides the verification that they're participating with the program. The program is a legit program, so we move forward.

And in that example, we do have a letter from a case manager on letterhead saying that they are conducting these classes and the client is participating in them. Why would we have thought to verify whether or not the case manager is telling the truth? It's on their letterhead.

That was the error. We rebut as many as we can. So I think that hopefully will get tossed. We did get one cleared out where we were held responsible for not giving the person credit for rent. During the interview they said, as soon as they get a job, I'm going to start paying my mom rent. Well, they're not paying rent, so we didn't give them credit for rent payment, but State QA said we should have, because they promised their mom they were going to.

But we didn't talk to mom.

Yeah, my son's promised me he's going to pay for the rest of his car payment.

Bob and I have that conversation pretty regularly.

So help me understand because I really want to kind of pull my hair out as I hear you guys describe this because when I look at the error factor, a lot of it has to do with the client not reporting accurate information. Exactly. And then I think I heard you say that there's no way the system can really verify that and that requires resources on your end to verify what the client is saying because I would think that you would have to verify everything someone tells you. You can't really take it for granted because most people who are seeking this kind of support are desperate.

Correct. Those are the things we're not allowed to verify.

And there is technology. It's called the work number. We have access to it. We have a contract for it. We can use the work number if one of Bob's people find the information that is being presented to them is not, they have a concern for a legitimate reason that it is or it isn't accurate. So if someone, if you were to say to me, Dan, my rent is $800 a month, or my mortgage is $800 a month, and it was that last year, Bob's person doesn't know that you have a mortgage that changes every year. He wouldn't know that. So because you said it was $800 last year, why would we think that what you're reporting this year is not the same without doing exactly what you just said, is please provide me with either your bank statement or your mortgage statement in order for us to verify. I personally don't think the vast majority of these people are doing things on purpose. I think they are desperate, like you said, Commissioner, and really need food, need medical. However, without reporting it correctly, the consequences of the error are enormous now compared to what they used to be.

And so we could ding for the error. What's the consequences for the person? Like, let's say that they just misspoke. Or didn't realize or whatever. What's the consequences back to the person who is making the application? Are they denied benefits for 30 days, 60 days? There's a grievance process. Oh, I didn't realize. Is there a process in place for, oh, I didn't realize?

Usually the consequence is we either issue too little benefit or too much benefit. But every once in a while, yeah, we will issue somebody benefits that should not have received benefits. That's one example of what the unemployment shows. And I just put this on the last page. It's just so you can see the fine line we walk between. We had two cases in which we didn't verify when we should have. And we had two cases in which we over-verified and we shouldn't have done that. So there's this really fine line that says, if I'm the state QA person, was it reasonable for the county to ask for verification? If not, then we get cited for that.

So, Commissioner, to your question, there's a range. So we can do what's called an intentional program violation if someone is purposely providing us erroneous information. information all the way to working with the district attorney's office to prosecute what they call welfare fraud. We don't call that anymore, but that's what it's called. All the way up to prosecuting welfare fraud. So we can take money back, issue less, pay the client back if we're the ones who are wrong, But there's an administrative hearing for the intentional program violation, and then there's the criminal justice system for someone who's being prosecuted for true fraud. And we do have some people, for instance, the person who created their own pay stubs. That's intentional. That's something that we're turning over to what we have. We have a fraud unit that does investigations. We also don't think we should be counted as an error for something that is intentional. And that's something that we're meeting with the state in the next couple of weeks. We have two of those.

Because we do investigate, and we follow through on those investigations.

And historically, if it's fraud, they take it out of our queue of cases. So we have two are fraud, and we've done fraud referrals and intentional program violations.

hearings on but they're still counting them against us and those are small numbers compared to the number if that you take in if it's that number two or whatever that's really a small number we issue over 13 million dollars worth of food assistance a month so when you even add all of these up you're talking a couple thousand dollars versus the millions of dollars that we issue a month it's a very small percentage it looks really big considering the percentages that we're using. But when you really think about it, we shouldn't be issuing aid to people who don't qualify for it. However, the state is They want, the front door wants as many people on the benefit as humanly possible and the QA department is holding us to the federal rules. And so the front end is using the waiver and the back end is using the actual rules. And Bob's folks are then caught into, I will do more or less, but we have to just be consistent. So that's what we're doing.

And the role of the administrator, because I'm thinking about the scenario that you talked about regarding to someone that's homeless. Because that happens a lot in reference to, you know, you think you can make your rent, and then all of a sudden, you know, you don't have housing. Correct. And I think that impacts the amount that you get.

Yes.

So let's say you were eligible for SNAP at a certain level and it's reduced to a lower level. Correct. Just explain how it works for someone who's homeless, who's automatically, let's say they got kicked out of a shelter or they no longer have the housing. Because we had shelters on there. So I think there's a lot of people who are in benefits that are in shelters.

In this definition, it's shelter is where you live. It's not necessarily a homeless shelter. But to Bob's point, if the shelter that you're currently living, for instance, if you lived in Comitas, and they provide three meals a day, you would not be eligible for food assistance because where you are living provides three meals a day. Oh, I never thought about that.

Even if you're not available to receive one of those meals at the times? Correct.

Yeah, because I'm hearing a lot about this in the community in reference to those who people are living in the housing and those shelters and their funds are being reduced. Correct. And then on top of that, the work requirements. Correct. And if you don't have housing and you don't have food and you can't pull yourself together to look for a job or get a job. That's right. What is the circle?

We have two instances where we agree if you're unhoused, there's no way you can get a full-time job. So we gave the waiver. And then we got two payment error rates because we used the waiver per state policy. We use the waiver because there's no way they can get full-time employment or participate with the work requirements because they're not housed.

And see, the impact of that in reference to us, the county, and others not being able to support, let's say, food assistance, it requires more tapping of other resources for food. Correct. Yes. And so it's putting hardship on, you know, some of these agencies where they're seeing now a spike of demand because of the shrinkage in their benefits. Correct. Even though they were getting assistance for the food and then if you get kicked out or you don't have that and you depended on that, then it's just creating this vicious cycle that's causing people to spiral down. Correct. Correct.

And unless we're able to use the work number the same way that State QA does and verify shelter expenses the same way that State QA does, I just don't see how we're going to solve this problem. I mean, the vast majority, as you mentioned, Commissioner Fields, clients either misspoke or they don't exactly know, so they take the best guess. That should not be a punishment because they were wrong, right? But that's what it's come down to is, you know, I think I paid... $700 and my utilities were $100 and then Snake UA says, no, it was $900 and you paid $250 for utilities. So there's an error. That's what we're doing.

We do want to be clear. There are some errors that we create because a human made a mistake. And we will be accountable for those. But that is not the vast majority of errors that we are seeing.

I think that the... I mean... The reality is that the feds want fewer people in these programs. And all to save a couple of thousand dollars in Arapahoe County. I think that's what advocates are really saying to the federal administration is, They had to do this to show that they could save money and then they could use more money in other programs. So it's not necessarily the state. I just don't understand why the state doesn't allow us to use these tools if what we're doing is losing $140 million of federal funding. Because that's the rate that the feds look at. So why wouldn't we work in partnership with the state so that we're doing exactly the same thing?

Yeah, and I hear you. And then beyond that, it's just the amount of confusion in the community. Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean, we clearly understand what's going on. But when you talk to someone that's on the street, like I'm only getting $21 in food stamps now because I just got kicked out of the shelter and I don't have a place to stay and I don't have any food. And then you have these advocates who don't clearly understand the policies because we had something in November, we have something coming up in October. And, you know, so the people who are impacted are just not clear in reference to what's going on.

And we saw a dip in our lobby traffic from 9,000 when I started to around 6,500 to 7,000 at center point a month. we're back up to over 8,000 people. That's not all for the assistance payments programs, that's child welfare too, but we're starting to see the lobby traffic pick up because people are confused. And people do want to talk to someone to clarify exactly what you just said, and the best way to do that for most people is to come and talk to you. They don't want to wait on the phone, and I wouldn't either, to be honest with you. I would come straight and talk. no we will continue to to come and share with you all we don't know hr1 has not fully been implemented yet so this is the starting of hr1 the medicaid portion of it hasn't even started yet that's going to be a whole other presentation that will come give to you the consequences to medicaid are astronomically higher than the ones in food And so those two things together are going to dramatically impact the most vulnerable people in our community.

Who's the head of CDHS right now?

Michelle Barnes.

Okay.

I put the numbers up so you can see the per. When I did this report, we had a 10.34 in an area. 5.42 agency, 4.92 client. But in that 5.42 of ours, we have three cases in which they're saying it was agency, even though we had nothing to do with the error, like incorrect mortgage amount. We don't know that because you're not allowing us to verify it, but they put it on the agency. So if you take those three out, we're closer to the 2% mark. So we're spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make agencies better when realistically, as Dan said, the vast majority are caused by clients and not on purpose, just because the way that the game is being played right now between policy and state QA.

And if we had access to this, the same program that state QA does, we could prevent

errors on both sides correct and we do have access to it we're just not allowed to use it yes we're only allowed to use it in some cases on the medicaid side we're able to use it whenever whenever we want to and we have two different contracts for it so it's not even implementing new technology it's being able to use the technology that is already given to us all because of going back to what commissioner warren gully said in the very beginning self-attestation versus verification So in a situation where you are looking to have as many people as possible be on the food assistance caseload, you use self-attestation. That's a state choice.

No, I get it. Yeah.

Versus we have the technology.

Right. Okay, that's where it was more of trying to understand that.

We have it.

Because I was trying to think through what other reasons would the state... Like I was saying, like licensing or whatever. But if all the same people would already have access and license, it just is about the use. Correct.

No sweat off their brow. And it's a lot of money to pay for using the technology. It's a decision.

And we do have an ask. We asked the state for a pilot so we could use the work number, just like State QA does. But we're waiting for that answer.

Are any other counties asking?

Well, they're all waiting for us because they're piloting. So we are the example for most things.

Well, and I think what's important too, Commissioner Campbell, is that there are some counties that say this will add time to their casework.

And it will.

And it will, but it... When you talk to Bob, the impact that Bob described seems minimal compared to what some counties are saying, well, if we have to do that, then it's going to be four hours more per case and that kind of stuff. So when I asked Bob if he could use income and mortgage, shelter, Just those two things would get rid of almost all of the errors that we make. Correct. And that is true across the state. Correct. So it's not going to take four hours to go in and look up Carrie Warren Gully income and shelter. Correct.

We've had to get a little bit creative. So we're staying within state rule with shelter expenses. So we're just sending a text to every applicant reminding them that, hey, if you want to bring in your shelter verifications at the time of your signature app or your redetermination, that would be really helpful to us. So we're hoping that we get 30% to 40% of the folks will just voluntarily bring it, but we can't require them to bring it. So we started that pilot this month in September for October's redeterminations. So we texted everybody that has a redetermination in October asking them to bring the shelter verifications with them. That's a good idea. And we think we'll get 30% to 40% response. So that will eliminate almost half of the shelter errors. And then the request to use the work number solely just like state QA does, we're just waiting for that answer from the state. They said they'd never done a pilot with a county before, so they have to get an AG's opinion. But if we can get those two things, yeah, we can virtually eliminate most of our errors.

Okay. What is the worst possible outcome of us just going ahead and using the resources available to us and asking for forgiveness. I know this is being, I'm just, we've talked in this office before about civil disobedience for a cause. This, I mean, I don't want you or any of our staff to be punished or cold, whatever it might be. But if we were to direct you to use all resources available to you despite the rules?

As of today, the worst thing they could do is suspend my salary and write letters to you. on the CDHS side, that's the largest...

But we save $140 million, we could give you a raise.

You could. No, but it is something that we talk about regularly, internally, and we talk about it regularly as directors, too, of what truly is the consequence. There isn't a large consequence besides the structure of following the rules. When Bob and I bring it up, our program staff, really, and our admins, get very worried about us telling them to break the rules because everything we do is predicated on following the rules. So it's a great question. There are counties that are struggling to the point where they're on performance improvement plans, and the biggest consequence is they write letters to the board, they come to talk to the board, them being the state, and then they could withhold the director's salary.

I think the bigger problem here is that Arapahoe County error rate is in pretty good shape.

Yeah.

It fluctuates month to month.

Yeah, but I mean, the problem is that Arapahoe County can't solve the state's error rate just by us using this.

Correct.

It would have to be The rest of the metro area being able to do this and agreeing to check the income. I'm just having a hard time understanding why the state is resisting this when it could reduce the error rate to the point of where we don't have a penalty.

I will give you the answer they give us. They do not want to reduce the amount of people on the caseload.

So they're willing to force... hundred and forty million dollar penalty.

Correct. We're over time. Okay. But this is this is I think we're all kind of just stunned. So you're not asking for any decision from us today? No.

We get asked regularly about what this looks like, so we wanted to present this to you as what the information we have today.

If you'll let me know if we get approved, and then I can let the rest of the board, or just send the rest of us an email if we get approved for the pilot. Do they know that we'll send to the commissioners if you guys get approved for the pilot, just so we're aware?

Do you know when they're expecting an opinion from the AG's office?

No. This has been a month. They're telling people that they're using Arapahoe County as a pilot that we don't have an approved pilot yet. So I have to tell my peers, we really don't have a pilot. Because we don't.

All right. With that,