Human Services

Fiduciary Activities

Statewide Outcome(s):

Fiduciary Activities supports the following statewide outcome(s).

Strong and stable families and communities.

Context:

The Fiduciary Activities budget program includes expenditures accounted for in the state's fiduciary fund group. By definition, the fiduciary fund group is used to account for assets held in trust by the government for the benefit of individuals or other organizations. Accordingly, the fiduciary fund group is excluded from the state's budgetary fund balance presentation. By isolating these expenditures in this budget program, spending in the other DHS budget activities is not distorted.

For DHS, the bulk of these expenditures are attributable to the payment of child support collections to custodial parents. Listed below are the specific types of expenditures included in this program.

·         Child support payments: Payments made to custodial parents from funds collected by the state from noncustodial parents.

·         MAXIS off-line recoveries: Funds recovered by the state and money received from counties that cannot be receipted MAXIS (the state computer system that determines eligibility for and issues public assistance payments). The funds are held here until DHS can determine what program is to be credited and to whom payment should be made. Payments are made to the U.S. Treasury for federal shares of recoveries, to counties for incentives, to clients for returned money or their balance of interim assistance recoveries, to providers for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) services, or to the state for any state share of recoveries.

·         Long-term care civil penalties: Monies collected by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from nursing homes that are assessed penalties for noncompliance. The portion given to states must be used solely for approved projects that specifically address nursing home deficiencies.

The expenditures and associated accounting processes in this activity are supported administratively by the budgets within the Central Office program.

Strategies:

Maintain necessary staff and information technology resources to adequately support payment collections and disbursement activity.

Results:

Minnesota citizens and DHS clients expect accurate, efficient, and timely payment processing. This performance measure tracks the efficiency and timeliness of child support collections disbursed to families. DHS consistently ranks in the top five states for processing child support payments.

Performance Measures	Previous	Current	Trend
Percent of Unresolved Undistributed Child Support Collections	2.1%	2.2%	Stable

Performance Measures Notes:

Compares Federal fiscal year 2009 (Previous) and federal fiscal year 2010 (Current). Source: Preliminary 2010 federal child support report.