3013 Area Agency on Aging Accountability | ADMINISTRATION-5600-MANUAL

Area Agencies and subcontractors with contract budgets for unit-cost reimbursed services will evaluate expenditure rates considering fluctuations in demand for services and remaining fund balances. The target ranges below do not apply to these budgets, with the understanding that expenditures may not exceed the amount of funding available in total. Area Agencies will work with subcontractors to assure that funds do not lapse at the end of the year. The Fourth Quarter year-to-date expenditures and service levels should equal 100% or have no more than a minus 2.5% variance.

The following rates of variance for expenditures and service levels, for contracts with line-item budgets are allowed:

First Quarter year-to-date = 25%, plus/minus 5%
Second Quarter year-to-date = 50%, plus/minus 5%
Third Quarter year-to-date = 75%, plus/minus 2.5%
Fourth Quarter year-to-date = 100%, minus 2.5 %.

DAS reserves the right to direct an AAA to prepare and submit a budget revision and/or contract amendment, which may result in a reduction in overall funding and reallocation of resources, based on the agency’s and subcontractors' actual performance in meeting targets as established above. Failure to provide the directed amendment could result in the application of additional sanctions.

AAAs shall meet targets for any quality, outcome, or other performance measures implemented or required by the Federal, State governments, and/or by DAS within an acceptable rate of variance. DAS reserves the right to consider reasonable explanations of historical spending patterns which would account for deviations from meeting targets for a given quarter.

All reports, budgets, budget revisions, contract amendments, and other required submissions to DAS shall be complete, accurate, and timely and provide sufficient documentation to verify such accuracy upon review by DAS, during any review, whether conducted at the AAA offices, or at the AAA’s service provider’s office, or through desk review.

Budget narratives or other documentation shall be sufficiently detailed to describe changes in allocations of funds, changes in services levels, expansion or discontinuation of services, addition of new services, and the rationale supporting the changes.

Each AAA shall maintain a timely reporting rate, on an annual basis, of 100% for financial reports, program performance reports, programmatic monitoring logs, waiting list data, and any other required reporting obligations as prescribed by DAS, unless the AAA has requested and received a written extension.

AAAs shall file area plans and any required amendments, all responses to quality assurance reviews, and budget revisions in a timely manner, unless an extension is granted.

AAAs shall submit all requests for extensions in writing, via email, on or before the due date of the specified report (for example, but not limited to, Area Plans/Area Plan Updates, financial and programmatic, client services reporting, wait list data, data clean-up, amendments, budget revisions, corrective action requests, and DAS requests for information).

The AAA Director shall submit the request “To” the attention of the DAS Division Director and the Business Operations Section Manager and “Copy” the AAA’s assigned Regional Coordinator and the AAA’s assigned DAS Contracts Administrator.

All requests shall provide the following:

AAAs shall use all standard electronic and/or paper forms promulgated by the Department of Human Services and DAS for reporting or maintenance of supporting documentation. The AAA may request consideration of the use of alternate forms if all required data are captured.

Refer to Section 3077 in this manual.