Cayuga County health department wins small state and local approvals, flags trouble accessing federal benefits and technical assistance

Kathleen Cuddy, health director for the Cayuga County Health Department, told the County Legislature’s Health & Human Services Committee that two departmental resolutions were approved and gave a detailed update on program trends and operational risks.

Cuddy said the committee approved a small pay increase for board of health hearing officers and accepted $23,286 in state Article 6 performance-incentive funds. The hearing-officer pay change was described as a minimal budgetary impact; Cuddy said the department spent less than $2,000 on hearing officers in 2024 and estimated the hourly change from $48 to $50 would add “less than $100 in total” if workloads remain similar.

The funds accepted from New York State are part of a rotating Article 6 award program. Cuddy said the $23,286 will be used to support work that qualifies under Article 6 activities and could help pay recurring software fees or support paid work on the community health assessment and community health improvement plan.

Beyond the formal resolutions, Cuddy and other health staff described operational priorities and constraints. Brenda Wyman, a department staff member who reported on Medicare/health insurance counseling services, said the office is about “17% federally funded” and that the local program is losing access to federal technical-assistance channels. “We were notified that the ... state health insurance program ... is no longer available to us for training and assistance,” Wyman said, and she added that the county no longer has the same liaison route to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) through the New York State Office for the Aging. Wyman said that loss of training and higher-level problem-solving support is “a little bit concerning.”

Wyman also described growing barriers for residents trying to access Social Security services: local staff lack special access to set up Social Security online accounts, many clients lack internet or reliable phone service, and call-wait times to Social Security can be “anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.” She and the county said they plan to notify federal elected officials about the access problems.

Cuddy summarized the department’s 2024 statistics packet and highlighted several program areas: immunization clinics (noting the county functions as a safety-net Vaccines for Children provider and served several hundred vaccine clients in 2024), WIC participation (about 1,419 participants), early intervention and preschool special-education caseload shifts (a drop of roughly 100 children in the early-intervention active caseload, offset by about 100 more children in the 3–5 preschool program), and lead-poisoning work (18 children discharged from the local program in 2024, twice the prior year’s count). She described the county’s MedGinnis/McGinnis and Medint systems as important Medicaid-compliance checks and said supervising staff and the fiscal manager perform ongoing quality-assurance reviews.

Public-health staff also noted growing mobile food operations, an increase in transient noncommunity water systems inspected, steady septic-plan work (79 plans approved last year), and continued rabies-prevention clinics (3 free public rabies clinics, with 359 pets vaccinated). Cuddy said the department is preparing a quarterly corporate-compliance template so the Legislature gets consistent compliance reporting going forward.

The committee voted to approve the hearing-officer pay increase and to accept the Article 6 award; both motions passed on voice votes with no recorded opposition noted in the transcript.

Cuddy and Wyman asked legislators to track the issues raised about federal training and Social Security access and said the department will follow up with elected officials and partners as those issues evolve.