Purpose

The objective of our examination was to determine the appropriateness of New York State Supplemental Program (SSP) Payments the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) made to recipients during the period October 2014 through March 2016.

Background

OTDA administers the New York State SSP, which provides a supplemental benefit to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients and other qualifying New York State residents. To be eligible for SSP, individuals must be at least 65 years old, blind or disabled, and have limited resources and income. We used data analytics to identify payments made to SSP recipients whose New York State salaries exceeded the SSP income threshold.  If the recipients’ income exceeds the SSP threshold, recipients are no longer eligible to receive payments. OTDA obtains information about recipients’ income from a variety of sources including the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Welfare Management System – the State’s repository of recipient information for multiple benefit programs, and self-certification by recipients.

Key Findings

OTDA processed 105 SSP payments totaling $6,870 to 14 State employees who were ineligible to receive benefits because the wages they earned exceeded the SSP income eligibility limits. As a result of our findings, OTDA determined the daily file from the SSA contained incorrect income eligibility information for an additional 3,000 SSP recipients. Officials planned to correct these 3,000 recipients’ records.

Key Recommendations

• Continue to develop a process for reliably determining recipients’ income eligibility, which may include other reliable sources of income data.
• Timely communicate results of recipients’ income eligibility verifications to the SSA, so that the SSA may correct the eligibility determinations, where appropriate.
• Recover funds inappropriately paid to the ineligible State employees.
• Confirm changes made to the files for the 3,000 recipients whose information was based on incorrect SSA data.

For a complete copy of Report 2016-BSE7-02, click here