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Secretary details reforms after deaths during protective‑services investigations; lawmakers press for stronger oversight
Summary
Department of Aging officials told legislators they have reshaped monitoring of Area Agencies on Aging and added verification steps after reviewing protective‑services cases; the secretary provided case counts and said new cooperative agreements include stronger remedies, including possible de‑designation of underperforming AAAs.
Legislators pressed the Department of Aging on how protective‑services investigations for older adults are handled after committee members cited recent news coverage of mishandled cases.
Representative Mullins asked what the department requires when an older adult dies during an investigation and whether AAAs involve law enforcement. Secretary Jason Kovulj said AAAs conduct initial investigations and that state regulation requires notification to the department, the coroner and law enforcement when a death has a nexus to a protective‑services case. He described additional verification steps his administration added and broader community‑level process improvement work with coroners’ offices and district attorneys.
Kovulj provided an accounting of recent cases: "since July 01/01/2024 until 11/29/2024, there has been 19,037 protective services cases. 482 of them, the older adult has passed during the course of an investigation. 70 of those cases were nexus cases. We checked all 70 of those cases. There was no correlation in those cases." He said the department also reviewed 412 non‑nexus deaths and found no connection.
Members raised concerns about the Comprehensive Aging Performance Evaluation (CAPE) monitoring cadence and remedial timeline. Representative Flood said CAPE would not be annual but on an 18‑month rotation and that remedial action could take up to three reviews (about 4½ years). The secretary said the previous system lacked consistent sample sizes and objective measures; his team replaced subjective elements with metric‑based reviews rooted in law and regulation and increased monitoring frequency. He said the updated cooperative agreements allow new corrective measures and that, in extreme cases, the department can de‑designate an AAA and solicit a replacement agency — a remedy he said he uses cautiously because removing an AAA can jeopardize services.
Lawmakers asked for more examples of remedial action; the department said historical punitive measures were rare before the current administration and that the new system is designed to identify problems early and support AAAs with technical assistance before taking steps that could disrupt service delivery.
The committee did not adopt new rules in the hearing but requested additional transparency and data releases tied to monitoring schedules already posted to the department website.
