How NY’s OTDA [social services agency] runs even more fatherhood (and DV) funding through FFFS alternate circuitry

(Post short-link ends “-23A” total wordcount about 6,500, published Jan. 15. 2014.  Other than adding this information, I’ve not edited the post since — but may sometime in the future. //LGH May 31, 2020)

From a pre-Thanksgiving draft (and in not much beyond draft shape) I simply want to illustrate how “Follow the money” is almost impossible when it comes to the entrenched systems of Fatherhood, yes, also Domestic Violence prevention categories.

Some things you can’t see without even reading some detailed Administrative Memorandum offering more perks through, as in this example, “Flexible Funds for Family Services.” [FFFS].  I provided about half a post’s worth of intro, so if you want the original (and more picturesque part) please do scroll down at least to the first set of quotes, in tables with a rich brown background. This post  relates to the “fatherhood.gov” a.k.a. “the National Responsible Fatherhood Resource Center and an Albany, New York street address on the contact page?  and who that relates to.  This field and the supposedly contrary field (domestic violence) since 1996 have been funded through the federal government. I did the best I could with formatting and hope the post further enlightens us ALL to (wake up and smell the coffee)….and make a New Year’s Resolution to start better comprehending “government” and how it’s funded.  While I’m not the expert, I do have access to some tools which are NOT taught in most schools or reported in the local mainstream media.  The tools aren’t to drown anyone with details, but the exhibit certain concepts — and from there, make a more informed decision of where you stand regarding (well, what’s to be done with your future TIME and LIFE).

Point Being, #1 — neither the US nor our local governments are “broke.” They are OBVIOUSLY faking it, as the memo below (or, others in the series, I DNR which) literally admit, the services are funded — but there was $9.74 +million still available in the FFFS fund, so rather than refund it to the taxpayers in the form of reducing taxes the next year, the idea is “Let’s keep it IN New York, how much does your Social Services District want, Oh, Local Commissioners of the District?” Never mind that we might not NEED so much welfare if so much hadn’t been withheld from us in the first place, or our grandparents! Point Being, #2 — even if they were broke (which they aren’t — as the CAFRs reveal), they’re not responsive to the public’s actual needs because no NORMAl person could possibly see – without devoting a profession and probably half a work year (half a day, every day)  into studying the convoluted trail — where the excess goes (or, is lost). Logical Conclusion, in my opinion anyhow: I think that’s as good a reason as any – and this IS where I stand on it now — to simply STOP funding ALL fatherhood/marriage promotion AND — (on the basis that as it clearly hasn’t stopped violence against women, or the roadkill, and that if “they don’t get it now, they won’t get it later) — the VAWA funded projects. Right away, those two might cancel each other out. Shut down supervised visitation, and a lot more wealth will be retained by divorcing parents, and while there’d be more alive people (as the field tends to create dead people from time to time, as does the forced co-parenting visitation field, ALL of it based on social science theory about families and poverty, at least sold under those theories and ALL of it rationalized on the reasoning that CHILD SUPPORT replaces what was spent for WELFARE TO NEEDY FAMILIES.. when in fact, the governments (plural) are already funding themselves through their income-producing enterprises — and assets), there’d be fewer broke people. If you want to go to the rational conclusion, go read Walter Burien — he says, and others have continued to prove — we can phase out taxation – it’s not needed (except if you NEED wars, ongoing??).  He says it well enough to understand. I also found a person (Ruml, author of “Pay as You Go Income Tax” and also at one point Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, and he said this to, as I recall, the American Bar Association, in about 1934 — we don’t need taxes (incl. corporate taxes) — they’re really here to establish federal policy (a.k.a. for population control purposes).  My link is on the side bar, the “Social Sciencification of America” right under “Abolishing the Rule of Law through Executive Orders.”  That’s what I’m talking about here. If you want to combine Walter Burien with Let’s Get  Honest thinking, I say while we’re at it, go one step further (OR, do this beforehand) and IF we keep taxes, just for old-times sake, the churches and religious institutions must be on a level playing field — and have to register and cough up their tax returns.  THEN lets’ see who want s to continue showing up on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (pick your major Abrahamic religion) and on Wednesday night Bible studies to be trained as a franchised marriage-counselor, or volunteer for fund-raising to help pay off some mortgages that the fund-raising volunteers don’t even have their own names on– they just attend! inbetween working to pay their tax bills and create more surplus for all the 90,000+ governments (see “US Census of Governments 2012, I’ve linked it), not to mention 50 states and territories. None of that appears likely to happen — like it should — so in the meanwhile, why not take another closer look at HOW some of the surplus is wasted, and admit that the option between stopping the accumulation of too much wealth at the federal governmental level (and plenty of other levels) is to throw up ones hands and GIVE UP accountability for the whole mess. Where people stand on the issue of government organizes their social behavior.  Perhaps — JUST PERHAPS — if it were better comprehended by more people, there might be more intelligent action, (after the initial year, or so, of complete outrage, well-deserved) to eliminate the income tax and free up several hours a day, every day, from many of our schedules.  For example, to learn some math — and accounting terms.  Then, to play with our kids, make love to our spouses or partners and maybe not be so angry with them, or scared about losing — money and social status.

Here’s just one such memo.  otda.ny.gov/policy/directives/2009/ADM/09-ADM-12.pdf – 2011-09-23 (detailed also below).

Did you know about ‘SOCIAL SERVICES DISTRICTS?”  New York apparently has 58.  Described HERE  It references child care because I happened upon the OCFS in order to find a definition of those districts:

New York State is divided into fifty-eight local social services districts. The five boroughs of New York City comprise one district. Outside of New York City each district corresponds to one of the fifty-seven counties that make up the remainder of the state. County Departments of Social Services (DSS) provide or administer the full range of publicly funded social services and cash assistance programs. Families whose income meets state guidelines and who meet other criteria, may be able to receive a subsidy to offset some of their child care costs. If you are interested in learning more about the availability of child care subsidies in your county, please contact your DSS office. Listed below is an alphabetical list of the fifty-eight DSS Offices available throughout New York State. …

Apparently here’s the law.  I don’t know when this division happened — but my point is, that from distribution of government funds and services, the state is divided up, one per county — but NYC (being so large) is its own district.  So from a Political Division — it’s by counties.  But from a FUNDING and SERVICE PROVISION point of view, they are Social Service Districts.  our country is being treated as an Administrative Region, split up by Regions into TEN (from HHS point of view).  See sidebar, “Pages” and “Vital Links”..

§  61.  Social services districts.   For the purpose of administration
  of public assistance and care the state shall be divided into county and
  city social services districts as follows:
    1.  The city of New York is hereby constituted a city social  services
  district.
    2.   Each of the counties of the state not included in subdivision one
  of this section is hereby constituted a county social services district.

For example (google results search) here’s a NY Senate bill attempting to expand the reach of “domestic violence services” for those districts to contract locally — and get reimbursed from the state — to provide more outreach to middle and high schools for DV programs, and to remove the requirement that 70% of the clientele actually BE DV victims and their children.  Thankfully it looks like the bill “died in committee” (several times).   Here’s another attempt (different bill#) last action shows January 2014 “referred to social services.” The point is, not to go crazy and try to track this all — the point is to point out how very convoluted the matter is — and look for other ways to track what goes where.  Alternately, give up the idea of finding out what’s being down with what’s deducted from your paycheck, and why people that get on welfare ONCE and have a custody case, have a hard time staying off it, and why being next-door neighbors, or customers to them at a hair salon, (or many other places) could become very dangerous, as most of these distressed and social-services-sucking population (the ones bankrupted through the courts, if they had a lot, or just something going in) possibly have pissed-off-exes somewhere around, and given how much happens right around hearings — and how very many hearings even a single case can have, year after year — it’s just ,well, a social hazard.  A “Clear and present danger,” and again, I’m talking about VAWA-authorized grants encouraging us to get out and get safe, while HHS-authorized grants to the States (and plenty of other places) encourage whoever we were trying to get safe FROM, to come back after us and grab the kids, or worse. My closest recommendation is, through the governmentally issued Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (for the appropriate governmental group) while ALSO finding out, from the same agency’s accounting numbers (i.e., Comptrollers of the Treasury, and others give NUMBERS and NAMES to various funds, see my “Top Ten Posts” link for an example of how I tracked certain funds in California. It’s work, but it’s at least BY FUND# which can then be found on a CAFR somewhere, as well as on a budget report, and in legislation somewhere.  THING IS — government has to appropriate through legislation — and most FUNDS have some sort of related legislation to go with them. The larger issue is — FACE IT — looks to me like our government is anything BUT “broke” as they are found here literally soliciting the “LCs” (Local Commissioners) through LCMs (Local Commissioner Memos) that more money is available to be drawn down — or if you wish NOT to “draw it down” you can bounce it back up to some statewide initiative, but make a decision.  (Pink-background below). At the bottom, is a section on Erie County, NY, talking about it some more –basic business talk re: government; I would never have found it without paying some consistent attention to, and having remembered a lesson learned long ago from ‘fatherhood.gov” and my habit of actually looking up street addresses. The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse  (aka “fatherhood.gov“) says CLEARLY across the brown banner, and in white letters at the bottom, (as does the “*.gov” suffix) is a government site.  We spend, overall, entirely too much time near the tops of websites, and not nearly enough going STRAIGHT to the bottom  and looking for: who paid, and what’s the street address, where this is often found. The “About us” page may, but usually does not, tell us this valuable information.

Who Are We? Link reads

(but background there is white not brown; I just like the color scheme, so have continued it to represent the fatherhood.gov website):

Who are we?

The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse is an Office of Family Assistance (OFA)* funded national resource for fathers, practitioners, programs/Federal grantees, states, and the public at-large who are serving or interested in supporting strong fathers and families.  [[and, for those who scroll down further, we learn what Budget Appropriation Act of 2010 helped it]] . . .

Contact Us The Claims Resolution Act of 2010 (CRA) re-authorized funding for the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC). The NRFC was initially funded through the Deficit Reduction Act (2005) for “the development, promotion, and distribution of a media campaign to encourage the appropriate involvement of parents in the life of any child and specifically the issue of responsible fatherhood, and the development of a national clearinghouse to assist States and communities in efforts to promote and support marriage and responsible fatherhood.

.So, regarding:

NY OTDA/Braswell etc. From “Strengthening Families through Strong Fathers” to Family Justice Centers (DV) funding

I kinda lost it when seeing another Family Justice Center qualifying in Erie County NY (along with “the following Fathers’ Rights initiative, being administratively solicited (the directive is to “social service district” providers through a “LCM” (Local Commissioner Memorandum” from the duo of the OTDA (TANF etc, I believe) and OCFS leadership in New York state.

$964.6 million of FFFS (Flexible Fund for Family Services) is made available.  Counties can do a MOE with a local provider, or authorize “intercepts” to their allotment of that rather large (almost $1 billion, right?) piece of the pie — and let the State Providers steer to their favorite state-wide groups.

Erie County already was having Kenneth Braswell and Russ Sykes (who put out this memo) and an NFI type guy — pushing fatherhood help and training seminars on the same […??]]  (2007), so I looked this up more at OTDA — and started mouthing off with information about the Family Justice Center initiative and the particulars of a San Diego group.   I shoulda kept my mouth shut on it, but here’s the writeup, for now.  I’m also seeing the pattern better, how the DV agencies are copying tactics from each other laterally. Towards the bottom of the post is some information on some Domestic Violence Agencies from California that Californians might want to make a note of, particularly as “the Center for Community Solutions” which comes up, I THINK, is also functioning as an umbrella agency (nonprofit) for another group — but which one, escapes me at the moment (1/15/2014). I saved this here so I could delete my excess talk from the  Blue-table part, below (listing of six providers in Erie County).

Report run 1-15-2014 (most of blog written November 2013, and kept in draft til today):

ADVANCED SEARCH RESULTS

Results 1 to 73 of 73 matches.
Page 1 of 1	1

Results 1 to 73 of 73 matches.
Page 1 of 1

.. Another example — as Erie County New York comes up (below) — here’s their YE2012 “CAFR” (see http://Cafrman.com if you still don’t understand what these are, or google Walter Burien.  Or, read the one I’m linking to– which explains itself well enough — just not what it signifies that most of us don’t know about CAFRs… Erie County has Buffalo, and SUNY at Buffalo, and, not counting the county New York City is in, is apparently only ONE of 57 NY counties.  Early pages describe the component units of government — and  “Social Service District” isn’t one, because that’s a State term for distributing social services — and money relating to them.  It really has more to do (I think) with HHS (federal) than a POLITICAL part of government. Social Service Districts are ADMINISTRATIVE units for organizational purposes.  It was news to me, til I found the memo talking about how to grab extra money for fatherhood funding!!! Erie County (New York)’s CAFR on page “viii” shows an organizational flow chart –most CAFRs seem to have them, and they are GOOD diagrams to look at; telling who’s underneath whom (i.e., responsibility/authority) — showing that “social services” comes under a “Deputy County” (Supervisor or some name.  See that page).  Elsewhere, we see how much funds are available (because “receivable”) for just this ONE county: Look at their fund balances.  From “page 47, Receivables due from Other Governments” (there’s also a table on the same page, it shows where money is coming from, and how much) Major revenues accrued by the County in the various governmental fund types at December 31, 2012 include sales and use taxes in excess of $50,505,817; state and federal assistance for social services of $100,850,051; and other state and federal aid (including grants) approximating $99,649,117.    Receivables at year-end of the County’s major individual funds and non-major funds in the aggregate, including the applicable allowances for uncollectible accounts, are as follows (dollars in thousands). That’s not what they HAVE, just what they are DUE. Here’s a bit of description (FYI) from page 32, bottom, just to show that there are these different kind of funds and “Government-wide” doesn’t include all of them!  (more at the CAFRman site): While separate government-wide and fund financial statements are presented, they are interrelated. The governmental activities column incorporates data from governmental funds and internal service funds, while business-type activities incorporate data from the government’s enterprise funds. Separate financial statements are provided for governmental funds, proprietary funds, and fiduciary funds, even though the latter are excluded from the government-wide financial statements.