Report 2018-117 Recommendation 14 Responses

Report 2018-117: City and County Contracts With U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Local Governments Must Improve Oversight to Address Health and Safety Concerns and Cost Overruns (Release Date: February 2019)

Recommendation #14 To: Yolo County Probation Department

To ensure that it receives adequate funding to pay for the costs of housing unaccompanied children for Refugee Resettlement, Yolo County should identify all allowable costs and include them in its future budget requests to Refugee Resettlement.

60-Day Agency Response

In November 2018, Yolo County re-engaged in discussions with ORR to request full funding for activities related to this program. We submitted the 2019/2020 budget request to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), to operate the program for the period of February 1, 2019 to January 31, 2020. We have prepared a budget that includes costs for clinical and security staffing, programming services, medical care, education, and unforeseen public safety expenses, such as involvement from other local law enforcement offices. In addition, we have increased our program budget for travel, supply costs, equipment, and incentives and food for youth. Further, we have also increased the allowance amount for administrative and indirect costs. The budget request is nearly $3.8 million above the original 17/18 levels, and we believe that it is a fair representation of the funding we need to carry out the programming according to best practice standards and to fully recover all costs associated with the program. The ORR program staff has approved our budget and we are operating under this newly increased amount.

Yolo County is committed to ensuring its agreement with ORR is cost neutral. Yolo County will closely monitor expenditures to ensure cost neutrality. If at any time overall contract expenditures are estimated to exceed available funding Yolo County will seek a budget augmentation from ORR.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Fully Implemented

All Recommendations in 2018-117

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.