Fed’s funding freeze could leave county DSS $3.9 million in the cold

CATSKILL―Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from freezing more than $10 billion in social services funding to five states, including New York. But the court battle is not over and could have a nearly $4 million impact on Greene County.

Greene County Department of Social Services Commissioner Kira Pospesel told county lawmakers this week that the federal money accounts for more than a quarter of her entire budget of approximately $15 million.

“It affected our major programs, the majority of DSS programs,” she said. “When you think about the DSS budget, a little over $10 million goes for Medicaid. So, I’m basically talking about everything else within DSS.”

“It’s all the cash assistance for clients, childcare subsidies, employment and work support, emergency housing, including money for the homelessness… it’s adult services, it’s those clients that we get here that we have to make their healthcare decisions for them because they no longer have capacity. And then the childcare block grant. All those monies were frozen,” Pospesel explained.

“Believe it or not, it is foster care, it is the CPS hotline, it is adult services, it is domestic violence,” she said. “I can’t imagine someone calling the hotline and nobody is there to answer the call.”

The funding, which goes to states before being passed on to individual counties, amounts to $3,897,000 in Greene County, she noted.

News of the freeze officially hit on January 6 after the Trump administration said it was pausing $10 billion in funding because it has “reason to believe” that New York, California, Colorado, Minnesota and Illinois were granting benefits to people who are in the country illegally, creating "widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Two days later, those states filed a 41-page lawsuit challenging the decision and on January 9, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a 14-day temporary restraining order, blocking the funding freeze.  

Since then, Pospesel said she has met with representatives from the New York Public Welfare Association and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), as well as the chairperson of the state’s social services committee.

“We have [less than] two weeks before we have another decision on the case,” Pospesel said. “So, at this point, potentially we will be frozen for that almost $3.9 million.”

And there are state and federal laws that require the affected social services programs to be provided.

“So, $3.9 million is going to have to come out of some place to continue those programs,” Pospesel said.

“The state has been silent on all this so far,” she added. “We have very little communication with the state besides the lawsuit that went forward.”

Legislator Michael Bulich (R-Catskill) asked Pospesel about the fed’s fraud allegations and what her department does “to make sure every T is crossed and every I is dotted so that the monies that are coming in are actually going where they’re supposed to be going.”

The department’s books, she replied, are open.

“We passed every audit. We used every system,” Pospesel said. “We are actually having a federal audit next week on the [Supplemental Security Income] population. That happens every couple of years. Is it connected? I don’t know. But they’ll go out, they’ll interview clients and everything else.”

As for now, she said everyone “is kind of in a holding pattern.”

“But I cannot close the programs. I cannot decrease the caseloads. We cannot stop serving the people that we serve on a daily basis,” Pospesel said.

‍