(a) (1) The department shall establish and maintain a plan whereby costs for county administration of the determination of eligibility for benefits under this chapter will be effectively controlled within the amounts annually appropriated for that administration. The plan, to be known as the County Administrative Cost Control Plan, shall establish standards and performance criteria, including workload, productivity, and support services standards, to which counties shall adhere. The plan shall include standards for controlling eligibility determination costs that are incurred by performing eligibility determinations at county hospitals, or that are incurred due to the outstationing of any other eligibility function. Except as provided in Section 14154.15, reimbursement to a county for outstationed eligibility functions shall be based solely on productivity standards applied to that countyâs welfare department office. (2) (A) The plan shall delineate both of the following: (i) The process for determining county administration base costs, which include salaries and benefits, support costs, and staff development. (ii) The process for determining funding for caseload changes, cost-of-living adjustments, and program and other changes. (B) The annual county budget survey document utilized under the plan shall be constructed to enable the counties to provide sufficient detail to the department to support their budget requests. (3) The plan shall be part of a single state plan, jointly developed by the department and the State Department of Social Services, in conjunction with the counties, for administrative cost control for the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs), CalFresh, and Medical Assistance (Medi-Cal) programs. Allocations shall be made to each county and shall be limited by and determined based upon the County Administrative Cost Control Plan. In administering the plan to control county administrative costs, the department shall not allocate state funds to cover county cost overruns that result from county failure to meet requirements of the plan. The department and the State Department of Social Services shall budget, administer, and allocate state funds for county administration in a uniform and consistent manner. (4) The department and county welfare departments shall develop procedures to ensure the data clarity, consistency, and reliability of information contained in the county budget survey document submitted by counties to the department. These procedures shall include the format of the county budget survey document and process, data submittal and its documentation, and the use of the county budget survey documents for the development of determining county administration costs. Communication between the department and the county welfare departments shall be ongoing as needed regarding the content of the county budget surveys and any potential issues to ensure the information is complete and well understood by involved parties. Any changes developed pursuant to this section shall be incorporated within the stateâs annual budget process by no later than the 2011â12 fiscal year. (5) The department shall provide a clear narrative description along with fiscal detail in the Medi-Cal estimate package, submitted to the Legislature in January and May of each year, of each component of the county administrative funding for the Medi-Cal program. This shall describe how the information obtained from the county budget survey documents was utilized and, if applicable, modified and the rationale for the changes. (6) Notwithstanding any other law, the department shall develop and implement, in consultation with county program and fiscal representatives, a new budgeting methodology for Medi-Cal county administrative costs that reflects the impact of PPACA implementation on county administrative work. The new budgeting methodology shall be used to reimburse counties for eligibility processing and ca
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