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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Kevin Kiprovski, Director of Public Policy at LiveOn-NY
4:22:27
·
136 sec
Kevin Kiprovski, representing LiveOn-NY, testified about the critical issues facing aging service providers due to late payments and budget cuts. He highlighted the severe financial strain on nonprofits in the aging services sector, with some organizations owed millions in unpaid funds.
- Emphasized that ICR (Indirect Cost Rate) deltas have not been paid for five years of services already rendered, amounting to about $50 million across their network.
- Pointed out issues with the Passport system creating bottlenecks in payments, including inability to process multiple year ICRs simultaneously.
- Called for standardization of payment processes across agencies to address inconsistent decision-making by program officers.
- Expressed support for the proposed legislation (Intros 1247, 1248, and 1249) to address these issues.
Kevin Kiprovski
4:22:27
Thank you so much Chair Steven and Juan for holding this hearing.
4:22:31
My name is Kevin Koprowski and I am the Director of Public Policy for Live On New York.
4:22:35
We represent over 110 community based nonprofits that provide core services under the New York City aging portfolio.
4:22:41
Basically if it keeps an older person independent in their home, we probably represent them.
4:22:45
This has been an issue for years and years, but it is particularly problematic now for two reasons.
4:22:50
One, the federal government got rid of the Administration for Community Living, which is what pays all of the aging service out for everyone in our network.
4:22:58
And two, the mayor has decided to cut $100,000,000 from DFTA's five hundred million dollars budget.
4:23:02
So our members are particularly scared about money that they haven't been paid yet and getting paid in the future.
4:23:08
There are a few key issues that I think are specific to aging.
4:23:10
I'm not going to repeat everything that everyone else has.
4:23:12
One, ICR deltas have not been paid for five full years of service and that have already been rendered.
4:23:18
There are people in our network that need $5,000,000, 8 million dollars, and across our network it's probably closer to $50,000,000 These are people who have been putting together ungodly coalitions of funding to make sure that they can keep their programs running and at this time are starting to find issues that are making them question if they can make payroll.
4:23:34
So we're really at a critical level there.
4:23:37
Second, the passport Passport system has unnecessarily created bottlenecks in payments.
4:23:41
I've been told that Passport can't process multiple year ICRs at the same time, which doesn't make sense to me.
4:23:48
I don't know how that works, but it should be able to do that.
4:23:50
And the second thing is we were told that you had to pick COLA or ICR because Passport can't process two separate payment streams at the same time.
4:23:58
So there definitely needs to be a review of Passport functionality because it is preventing money from getting out the door.
4:24:03
And you know we don't think that the system that's meant to facilitate payment should be stopping payment.
4:24:09
Next, we need to standardize payment processes across all agencies.
4:24:12
There's a lot of idiosyncratic decision making among program officers that just leads to capricious denials of invoices and budget mods that, you know, there's no standardization there that our members can see.
4:24:23
So even though, you know, once things are invoiced properly, they get paid out.
4:24:27
What is properly depends on what day you're talking to who.
4:24:29
And the last one, we support the passage of all the bills on today's agenda.
4:24:33
December will alleviate some of these cash flow intros, 12:48 will alleviate some of these standardization issues, and December will bring to light the scale of the issue, but we just need this money out.
4:24:42
Thank you so much.
4:24:42
Have a great day.