Health department warns of salary 'underfunding,' FTE-count errors as lawmakers weigh cuts

Donna Auckland, chief financial officer for the Department of Health and Human Services, told the Senate Appropriations Human Resources Subcommittee on March 1 that the department’s salary block grant has structural and accounting problems that members should consider as they finalize biennial budgets.

Auckland said the department builds its salary budgets from a dollar block-grant rather than an FTE count and that last biennium’s accounting left the department with funded positions that were not included in its official FTE count. She said lawmakers approved funding for about 98 positions last biennium but the FTE count in the system did not include them; for the upcoming biennium the department submitted 2,688.35 FTE, but roughly 95 of those positions were budgeted at $0. ‘‘If I had the dollars in my budget right now and I hired them all at lower level positions, I could hire 2,700 people today as long as I don't go over my dollars,’’ Auckland said, adding that in practice she is constrained by the available appropriation and the department’s actual payroll (about 2,450 employees paid in February).

Auckland walked the committee…