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Council Member Brannan questions DFTA on federal funding, budget restorations, and case management
3:10:34
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9 min
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Council Member Justin Brannan questions Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez and CFO Jose Mercado of the Department for the Aging about the agency's budget, focusing on federal funding concerns, budget restorations for older adult centers, case management services, and indirect cost rate adjustments. The discussion reveals details about the agency's funding sources, budget allocations, and challenges in providing services to older adults in New York City.
- DFTA's federal funding primarily supports case management, meal services, and elder abuse programs, with concerns about potential cuts to these areas.
- The agency has a current case management budget of about $51.2 million, with 491 older adults on the waiting list for services.
- An additional $20 million was allocated in FY25 and FY26 for indirect cost rates for human service providers, with a baseline 10% ICR established for all nonprofits.
Justin Brannan
3:10:34
I wanna jump right into, the federal funding concerns.
3:10:41
Federal funds make up 14% of New York City Aging's fiscal twenty six budget and 16% in FY twenty five.
3:10:50
What are your department's primary federal funding sources?
3:10:55
And what programs and services do they each support?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:10:58
I will start and then Jose you jump in.
3:11:02
Primarily our case management which are our three B services.
3:11:06
And the bulk of it is meal services, home delivered meals are C1 and C2 which are the congregate meals.
3:11:15
And then they also provide services for elder abuse and that's it.
3:11:24
Okay, what grants or programs are we most concerned about being at risk, of being cut?
3:11:32
I think that the ones in jeopardy we don't know, to be honest with you.
3:11:38
It's everyday it changes.
3:11:40
But so far, we've we've seen some impact on our workforce, which is our title five programs and our older worker programs, which are essential to stem poverty.
3:11:52
And so we've been getting back and forth on on that.
3:11:56
Sometimes it's closed.
3:11:57
Sometimes they rescinded.
3:11:58
But fortunately, we have a very aggressive fiscal officer who has already drawn down the federal dollars and advances.
3:12:06
So we feel a little more comfort there.
3:12:09
We're concerned about the case management, the 3 B dollars.
3:12:14
And of course, core to all of our services are nutrition services.
3:12:19
So any impact on that will severely impact our ability to continue.
Justin Brannan
3:12:25
And have you assessed how the agency would be impacted if there are cuts to these programs?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:12:32
We we for the last two months have been going through several scenarios.
3:12:39
We've had a worst case budget.
3:12:41
We've had a moderate.
3:12:43
And then we have the reprieve which we know will still have an impact.
3:12:47
And so we've done all of those scenarios.
3:12:51
But it's so difficult to plan when the information is ever changing.
Justin Brannan
3:12:57
And has City Hall asked for that assessment from you?
Jose Mercado
3:13:03
We've been sharing this information with OMB.
Justin Brannan
3:13:05
Okay.
3:13:07
So the older adult center PEG restoration.
3:13:10
The executive plan includes a PEG restoration of $23,000,000 in FY '26 and a baseline restoration of $37,700,000 starting in FY '27 for older adult centers.
3:13:23
Can you clarify which PEGS this funding is restoring?
Jose Mercado
3:13:28
So these were underspending in the older adult clubs.
Justin Brannan
3:13:35
When were the PEGS originally instituted?
Jose Mercado
3:13:39
Some of these PEGS go back to 'twenty three.
Justin Brannan
3:13:42
FY 'twenty three?
3:13:44
Yeah.
3:13:45
Could you talk about what impact these pegs have had on the agency?
Jose Mercado
3:13:51
Well they were all pegs.
3:13:52
They were for the future so they had no impact since they were all restored.
Justin Brannan
3:13:56
And after that restoration are there any outstanding pegs?
Jose Mercado
3:14:00
No.
3:14:00
No.
Justin Brannan
3:14:03
What's the current budget for older adult centers in FY '25 and '26?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:14:09
The current one for older adult centers for '25 is 257,900,000.0.
3:14:20
Minions.
3:14:21
And for '26 it's 262,900,000.0.
Justin Brannan
3:14:30
And how much of that's been spent to date in FY '20 '5?
Jose Mercado
3:14:37
Roughly about 80% of it.
3:14:40
Okay.
Justin Brannan
3:14:44
Council's FY twenty six preliminary budget response called on the administration to add $6,300,000 to the Department of Aging's budget to enhance management programs.
3:14:53
The needs for these funds, we believe, is evident as there were four ninety one older adults awaiting case management services at the end of twenty twenty four.
3:15:04
Did your agency advocate for additional funding for case management in the executive plan?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:15:12
We have long extensive conversations with OMB about what our needs are.
3:15:23
The challenge that we're also having in case management is that in addition to with the allocation that we have, we are spending more time per client because the situations are getting, the case management cases are getting more complex.
3:15:42
So we're serving less clients but with more hours and spending the same amount of money.
Justin Brannan
3:15:49
Was there a dollar amount that you requested?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:15:57
In our conversations with OMB, there are many requests that go back and forth in terms of case management as well as all the other categories.
Justin Brannan
3:16:09
The current case management budget is what?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:16:15
51,100,000.0.
3:16:19
Close to 51,200,000.0.
3:16:23
And it'll be 53,200,000.0 in FY twenty six.
Justin Brannan
3:16:31
And do you think that's enough?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:16:35
I always say that the the needs outpace the resources.
Justin Brannan
3:16:42
So how many older adults are currently on the case management waiting list?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:16:46
Ah, let me get you that.
3:17:00
No, that's the wait list.
3:17:03
You want the wait list?
Justin Brannan
3:17:06
Yeah, how many
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:17:07
Oh, I'm sorry.
3:17:08
I thought you wanted how many people served under.
3:17:12
The wait list is four ninety two.
3:17:17
I mean four ninety one.
Justin Brannan
3:17:20
That higher or lower than normal?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:17:24
I would say that that is sort of keeping pace with where we find ourselves now.
Justin Brannan
3:17:33
Okay.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:17:34
And we always had this conversation with city council about what was a waiting list.
3:17:39
And we finally have succumbed to your definition of what a waiting list is.
3:17:45
Because we would
Justin Brannan
3:17:47
Isn't that clear?
3:17:48
Mean a waiting list is a waiting list, no?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:17:49
Well, yes and no.
Justin Brannan
3:17:51
How you define it?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:17:52
How do we define it?
3:17:53
We defined it because we do a basic assessment for everyone.
3:17:58
And then what was really driving the waiting list for us a lot of the time has been the fact that the follow-up services might not have been implemented.
3:18:08
And so that that person was waiting for a service but not for case assistance because they were already designated a client.
3:18:16
So it was, yeah, right.
3:18:18
So we went back and forth.
3:18:19
We went, yeah.
3:18:20
We went back and forth for about how many months on this?
3:18:23
About twelve, thirteen months on it and then we just conceded.
Justin Brannan
3:18:29
Last for me is with regard to the indirect cost rate adjustment.
3:18:34
The executive plan includes an additional almost $20,000,000 FY25 and FY26 for indirect cost rates for human service providers.
3:18:45
Could you tell us how that amount was determined?
Jose Mercado
3:18:50
So this calculates the the increased direct rate for each provider.
Justin Brannan
3:18:56
So and why was the additional funding necessary?
Jose Mercado
3:18:58
We did not implement the indirect rates.
Justin Brannan
3:19:01
Say that again?
Jose Mercado
3:19:02
We did not implement the indirect rates for '25.
3:19:06
Or so this basically allows us to implement them for '25 and '26 going forward.
Justin Brannan
3:19:12
So is that why the funding was only allocated in FY '25 and '26 and not in the out years?
Jose Mercado
3:19:18
That's correct.
3:19:19
That's correct.
3:19:19
So you know the ICR changes every three years.
3:19:22
So they're just funding it for '26, assuming a lot of the '26 is also '27.
Justin Brannan
3:19:26
So what's the baseline funding amount in FY '25 in the out years?
Jose Mercado
3:19:30
Well right now it's sorry.
3:19:33
Give me one second.
3:19:37
It's $26,000,000 How much?
3:19:39
26,000,000.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:19:41
20 6 million?
3:19:41
20 million.
Jose Mercado
3:19:42
20 6 million.
3:19:42
So we have
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
3:19:43
I also want for the record to note that we established a baseline ICR for all nonprofits.
3:19:50
We had many nonprofits, especially the small ethnic or community based nonprofits that did not have an ICR.
3:19:57
And we determined that every nonprofit should have an ICR.
3:20:01
We gave a baseline 10% to every nonprofit.
Justin Brannan
3:20:06
Okay.
3:20:07
I am going to turn it over to Chair Hudson.
3:20:11
Thank you very much.