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39. PUBLIC FIDUCIARY REQUEST FOR REVIEW OVER BASELINE Approve an exception to FY2017 Budgeting Guidelines and Priorities allowing the Office of Management & Budget to review the following request over baseline: • $352,431 expenditure increase to personnel services for four new Fiduciaries assigned primarily to front-end case administration and stabilization, along with the addition of one support position • $200,871 revenue increase for additional fees anticipated as a result of the increased positions • The net increased impact is $151,560. Currently, the Public Fiduciary caseloads are too high to be maintained. The Office of the Public Fiduciary is mandated to limit the fiduciary caseload to a size that allows each fiduciary acting as a guardian to accurately and adequately support and protect the person under his/her care. This includes a minimum of one visit per month with each person and regular contact with all service providers. The current staff-to-client case ratio is 1:77 and includes both guardianship and conservatorship appointments. The standards governing the fiduciary industry recommend caseloads not exceed 1:40. Client visitation, assessment, and monitoring services are only performed once within a quarter as a result of the high client-to-staff ratios. The additional staffing requested will allow for better service to the clients, more timely responses, and will reduce the potential for liability. The Public Fiduciary is able to collect revenue only when a client’s accounts are sufficient to fund it after the client’s needs have been met. By better staffing front-end case management to obtain client entitlements, the Public Fiduciary will be able to collect more revenue to partially offset additional costs for the requested positions. Triage and revenue collection will be the majority of the work performed by the new positions, and the most active cases will be handled by this unit. This will help to alleviate some of the significant workload strain currently an issue for the regular line Fiduciary caseloads. (C-56-16-005-M-00)