29 May 2014: Board of
Supervisors’ Meeting @ 5p
Thank you for your
appointment this evening.
The Transparency Committee
would like to report on 2 Claims issues this evening. The first issue has to do with Health
Insurance payments and the Affordable Care Act.
The second issue we have been working on since Feb 2012 and it has to do
with the payments made to Gold Strike Casino that were “miscoded” by our
Accounting Department.
- The public needs some clarification concerning
whether Tunica
County is self insured
or is not self insured. To be self
insured, Tunica County would have to be footing the entire cost
of the healthcare for Tunica
County employees and
these claims would need to be entered on the monthly claims docket. To the best of my knowledge payments
have not been put on the claims docket.
What
I believe to be the case is that our current healthcare insurance was built to
have an employer cap at $60K per person and Cigna would pick-up after this
threshold had been met. To me this makes
our policy not a self insured policy but a policy with a very high employer
deductible. If this is true, then there
needs to be a discussion about Cigna’s responsibility of notification and/or
refund each Jul 1st under the Affordable Care Act. This means that Cigna would be responsible
for writing a letter to Tunica County explaining why we are not getting a refund or
Cigna needs to be sending a check to Tunica
County if they did not
spend 80% of our premiums on our employee’s healthcare.
For
the past 2 years, our Committee has been asking this question and not getting
answers. What we need to know is 1. Are
we really self insured and therefore don’t qualify for a refund or 2. Are we
due an explanation or a check from Cigna.
Additionally,
our Committee is making the following request.
All of you ran on the Democratic ticket to be elected to the offices you
now hold. Would you consider writing a
letter to Gov Bryant asking him to take the Medicaid expansion money that is
being offered to each and every state under the Affordable Care Act? Maybe you would consider asking other
Supervisors in other counties to do the same.
What
would this do for Tunica
County? If we pay a worker $8.50 an hour he or she
will make $17,680 per year. For a family
of 3, this would be below the poverty level.
If some of our employees are only earning poverty level wages, perhaps
they would qualify for Medicaid and this would cut our Healthcare insurance
expense.
So,
please consider writing the letter(s).
DOCUMENTATION FOR #2 BELOW THAT WAS PRESENTED IN THE MEETING WILL BE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC ALONG WITH THE BOS MINUTES AFTER THE 1ST MEETING IN JUNE 2014.
- The second item in the Transparency report this
evening is the ongoing questions and lack of documentation with the Sheriff/Homeland
Security/Emergency Management claims and payment to Gold Strike
Casino. You will recall these two
claims ($5,738.94 and $5,971.25) total $11,710.19 and were reportedly
“miscoded” in our Accounting Department.
This
is our update:
- The Grant (S91EO72) that is supposed to pay for
these expenses was granted to the Tunica County Sheriff’s Department for
Force Protection from the MS Department of Public Safety – Office of
Homeland Security. The Program
Name is: Fiscal Year 09 ODP Homeland Security Grant Program. The grant period is: 10/01/2009 to
06/30/20ll. The award date is 15
Jun 2010. The amount of the grant
is $61,770.00.
Notes
on the above information: I personally
had several conversations with the former Board Attorney about exactly who has
control over the monies in the Homeland Security budget and the Emergency
Management budget. My sense of what I
was told was that these three departments have to work together but the Sheriff
does not have control over HLS or EM budgets.
I believe this report will show differently. I believe the Sheriff has control of these budgets
and grants through his employee, Randy Stewart.
- The next page in this report will further show
the lack of clear lines between the Sheriff and Homeland Security and
EM. This page is a letter
requesting reimbursement under the Grant listed in 2 (a) of this
report. This request is written on
Sheriff Hamp’s letterhead. The letter
is dated 21 Dec 2011. The letter
was signed by Becky Pope for Randy Stewart and uses all three of
Stewart’s titles. (Don’t even
think of blaming any of this on Becky Pope. We will be watching.)
The
grant period for this request is dated 8/1/2011 to 8/31/2012. (It appears there
may have been a renewal of the grant listed in 2(a) but the documentation was
not provided or could not be found.) The
request of the refund is $15,373.52. This
is $3,663.33 more then the 2 claims for $11,710.19. So, where is this money?
- The next page is a copy of a demand check
written to Gold Strike Casino. The
date of this check is 3 Oct 2011. I
don’t believe this check was approved by the previous BOS. The claims for
this expense did not show up in the Claims Docket until Nov 2011.
- The next 2 pages contain a bill from Gold Strike
Casino for the $5,738.94 and the purchase order for this expense. The date of the bill is 20 Sep
2011. This is a bill for 18 days of buffets (8/10/11 to
8/28/11).
There is a requisition number (67785) and a purchase order (60738) dated
8/8/11 signed by Randy Stewart for this expense. The quantity of buffets is blank. The County Department is listed as EMA and
the Budget to be charged is HLS. More
blurred lines.
- The last page of this report is a bill from Gold
Strike Casino for $5,971.25. This
bill is also dated 20 Sep 2011.
There is a note on this bill that says “Room List (see
attached)”. This information was
not provided or was not found.
There is a reference to a purchase order (60681). This purchase order was not provided or
was not found.
Remember the County Administrator
trying to show us what was previously sloppy and unmanageable paperwork left by
the last Administration? This report
shows at the very least sloppy paperwork.
This report may even show misappropriation of funds. Make no mistake. It is a mess.
This is what I do know. Until the change in Administration, we have
had a devil of a time getting information that should be readily available to
the public. We have been working on this
particular Claim since Feb 2012. In Feb
2014, we submitted a Freedom of Information Letter for the documentation to
support these claims. The current Administration
has done its best but going through the piles and piles of paperwork has proven
to be too time consuming. I might add we
may still have some employees left over from the last Administration who don’t
fully understand that the public has a right and an obligation to question
their government.
Okay, all of that being said,
I would like to ask Randy Stewart, through the BOS, to get together all of the
documentation to support these claims and to provide an explanation of what
happened to the $3,663.33 difference between the claims and the request for
reimbursement.
One more thing, Sonny you
asked me to take a second look at the claims…to make sure you didn’t overlook
something and I am happy to do that every month. What I am not happy about is a request to pay
$30 for a copy of the claims. I worked
with Mr. Thompson and we decided that everyone should have access to the
claims. What was worked out was a copy
of the monthly claims docket is being placed in the public records room each
month after the first meeting. However,
it sure would be easier for me to do the job you asked me to do if I had a copy
of the claims. Can you do anything to
make this $30 go away?
