SD Social Services Increased One Reserve Fund by 45% in FY2014

My neighbor Ken Santema gets me looking at documents on the agenda for Tuesday’s Government Operations and Audit Committee meeting, and I find one small fiscal note worth pondering.

The South Dakota Department of Social Services has a fund called “Company 3079” used to administer “various fees and nonfederal monies received by the Department of Social Services including: OCSE and food stamp incentive monies, Bush Foundation, surplus vehicle receipts, homemaker fees, adoption fees and alternative care fees.” (Don’t go all Area 51 on me—lots of state funds get company numbers like this.)

According to the report GOAC will review tomorrow, from FY2011 (the last Rounds budget) to FY2014 (the third Daugaard budget), Company 3079 decreased spending on grants and subsidies from $1,898,653.01 to  $732,774.07. Over the same period, Company 3079 increased personal services and benefits from $1,408,152.48 to $2,725,931.28. The increase exceeds the decrease, so let’s hope the “helping people” balance came out as a net gain.

But after three years of staying steady in the seven-million range, the FY2014 amount of cash Company 3079 has pooled in the state treasury jumped more than three million dollars, to $11,048,200.62. That’s a 45% increase from the FY2013 balance.

Apparently the Governor has been spending this reserve down by more than half of it this year and next. Surely GOAC will check to make sure this money is being used wisely.

While they’re at it, perhaps GOAC will also ask why the Company 3079 travel expenditures jumped from $2,369.79 in FY2011 to the mid-20Ks in the next two years to $69,212.53 in FY2014.