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AG investigating Mahoning Job and Family Services employees
YOUNGSTOWN
State investigators are looking into possible criminal activity by two Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services employees, department director Robert E. Bush Jr. confirmed.
Bush said Friday the agency received a citizen complaint at the end of September regarding possible irregularities in the handling of Medicaid and food-assistance cases.
Specifically, the complaint alleged that food-card and Medicaid benefits were given to people who weren’t income eligible, Bush said.
The complaint prompted him to seek the advice of the county prosecutor’s office, then the sheriff’s office, he said.
The sheriff’s office forwarded the case to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, whose representative came to the Oak Hill Avenue agency Tuesday. Bush said that, to his knowledge, that office did not remove any evidence from the premises.
Two employees are on paid administrative leave pending a pre-disciplinary hearing the agency will conduct, with one having gone on leave Oct. 26 and the other, Nov. 16.
Bush declined to name the employees.
The state investigation is ongoing, with no timeline as to when it will end, Bush said.
The two employees in question are case managers, Bush said. Specifically, the complaint was in regard to “possible inappropriate determining of eligibility to receive benefits,” he said.
“We’ve taken some actions and put some administrative [procedures] in place, and some additional guidelines in place, to hopefully prevent this in the future,” Bush added.
Reached for comment, Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said the county will await the results of the state investigation, however long that may take.
“We take these things very seriously, and we’re looking forward to whatever the state attorney general uncovers,” he said. “We must follow the law, and we will let the investigators do their job, and we will await whatever their findings may be.”
He said that, at this time, he does not know the “scope and depth” of the possible criminal activities.
County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains declined to comment on the matter.
An AG’s office spokesman confirmed the investigation, but declined further comment on it.
Bush said Brad Hammer, a special agent in the health care fraud section of the AGs office, met with him and Audrey Morales, the county JFS fraud and compliance administrator, on Tuesday to discuss the matter.
He said Hammer had previously spoken by telephone with Morales concerning this matter and retrieved related documents from the state computer system.
Asked whether he and the local JFS administration are cooperating fully with this investigation, Bush replied: “Yes, sir, 100 percent.”
The state is investigating allegations the two case managers gave benefits to people who weren’t eligible, Bush said.
“There are some allegations they [the ineligible recipients] were related in some way,” to the case managers, Bush said.
He said between six and 10 people allegedly got improper Medicaid or food-card benefits, or both, over periods ranging a few months to two years. They will have to pay back any improperly received benefits or suffer reduced future benefits to compensate for the improperly obtained benefits.
“We’re going to continue to monitor and look for ways to ensure that the integrity of our system remains high,” Bush said.
Bush said the system’s integrity is generally high.
Mahoning County JFS has 56 case managers and about 75,000 beneficiaries, he said.
“We hope we nipped it in the bud, and we don’t anticipate any more inappropriate eligibility determinations,” Bush said.
As for steps to prevent the irregularities from recurring, Bush said he now requires all food-card supplements (benefits above the normal allotment) must now be examined by a JFS supervisor, who examines the documentation prepared by the caseworker to justify the supplement.
For example, if someone applies for a supplement based on a power failure that allegedly caused food in a refrigerator to spoil, the event and its duration must be documented by a letter from Ohio Edison, he said.
County JFS policy requires caseworkers and their supervisors to remove themselves from benefit eligibility determinations concerning their relatives, Bush said.
An Ohio Ethics Commission representative commented it’s inappropriate for JFS workers to participate in eligibility determinations concerning their relatives during a July ethics workshop for county employees at Oakhill Renaissance Place, where JFS is housed.