County audit finds staffing, processing and language-access gaps at eligibility office; board directs quarterly updates

A county management audit released Sept. 9 identified significant staffing shortages and program problems in the Department of Employment and Benefit Services(DEBS), and the Finance and Government Operations Committee directed the department to report implementation progress quarterly.

The audit, presented by Cheryl Solov, the county's management audit manager, found five primary problem areas and made 10 recommendations. "We had five findings and 10 recommendations, most of which were agreed to by the department," Solov said during the committee meeting.

The report said DEBS is coping with high staff turnover, rising overtime costs, increasing caseloads and a decline in budgeted positions. Auditors found it takes about a year to hire and train eligibility workers and recommended hiring smaller cohorts more often and establishing a joint labor-management committee to continuously assess workloads and staffing. The department agreed to several recommendations and said it is running a pilot related to staffing approaches.

Auditors also found application-processing timelines exceeded federal requirements by 2023. Contributing factors include reduced staffing, use of comp time in lieu of cash overtime, new technology rollouts and staff reassignments. The audit recommends quarterly public reporting on processing times and caseloads and switching to cash overtime rather than comp time; DEBS agreed to the overtime recommendation.

The review raised concerns about community-based organizations (CBOs) that assist applicants: roughly half of applications processed through CBOs were denied, a denial rate higher than that for DEBS-managed applications. Auditors recommended reviewing denied cases referred by CBOs and imposing outreach and mandatory training for partners; DEBS agreed.

Language-access performance was another audit finding. For some languages, average telephone interpreter wait times exceeded the contract target of 30 seconds. The audit recommended monthly contractual reporting by language and sharing performance data with user departments; the department agreed to monitor and report wait times.

DEBS and county leaders framed the audit in the context of pending federal changes to Medicaid and CalFresh rules (referred to repeatedly in the meeting as "HR 1"), which supervisors said increase urgency. A deputy county executive noted that DEBS must be part of mitigation strategies to avoid enrollment losses under new federal requirements.

Committee members pressed for implementation transparency. Vice Chair Ellenberg asked whether the recommended quarterly reports to the Finance and Government Operations Committee had already been agreed to; DEBS staff said they supported regular reporting but proposed labor updates as the primary forum. Committee members then made a formal motion requesting that DEBS return to FGOC quarterly with implementation updates, excluding matters that must remain in closed session. The committee approved that direction.

The committee vote was recorded with Vice Chair Ellenberg and Chairperson Young voting yes. The department said it will provide status updates, continue existing pilot work on staffing and make agreed contract and reporting changes for interpreter services.

The audit team said they would provide more detailed data on unit-level error rates and recommended supervisors meet monthly with units to address error reports.

Committee members and DEBS officials agreed the audit's recommendations should be tracked and that the department's public dashboards will continue to show processing metrics while staff provide the committee with quarterly implementation updates.

The committee did not adopt the labor committee recommendation as written; DEBS indicated it wanted to finish its current pilot before negotiating a permanent labor-management framework.

The committee asked staff to keep public-facing dashboards current and said they expect DEBS to flag capacity shortfalls in future reports so the board can consider policy or budget options.

Ending: The committee voted to accept the audit findings and directed quarterly reports back to FGOC on implementation progress, with sensitive topics handled in closed session as required. The county indicated many audit recommendations were already agreed to and that the department will move to implement them.