Commissioners approve reallocating health department funds
OTTAWA COUNTY — The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners seems poised to reallocate unrestricted funds from the Department of Public Health.
The board's finance and administration committee unanimously approved the reallocation to the county's general fund on Tuesday, April 2. Commissioners first discussed moving more than $2.3 million in funding during a health and human services meeting in March.
Though the funds are "unrestricted," Health Officer Adeline Hambley said the money allows the department to respond to public health emergencies and manage cost-based reimbursements from Medicaid, which have a two-year delay in calculating amounts to return to OCDPH.
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A portion of the funds are also meant for potential cost of living adjustments for staff during union negotiations.
The reallocation was broken down Tuesday — $1,839,314 from the health department fund and $640,026 from the child care fund, for a total of $2,479,340.
This differed from the $2,355,237 figure on the meeting’s agenda. Fiscal Services Director Karen Karasinski thanked the committee for updating the total amount after she had double-checked the figure.
Public comment saw two residents express concern over the reallocation, specifically how the health department can act quickly in public health emergencies if approval is needed to transfer money from the general fund.
While addressing the board, Karasinski said, under the current system, the health department would still need approval from the board to use unrestricted funds.
A question — brought up both during public comment and by Commissioner Doug Zylstra in March — is why the health department’s unrestricted funds were moved and not similar funds from other departments.
“If we’re looking to do a blanket policy, that makes sense," Zylstra said during the health and human services committee meeting. "If we’re looking just to look at public health, that doesn’t seem to make sense to me on a process level.”
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The finance committee asked Karasinski to prepare a draft of the policy to present to the planning and policy committee next month.
“I think the real advantage (of reallocating the funds) is the transparency of what the funding is ... in any given year,” Karasinski said.
— Contact reporter Tess Ware at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @tess_journalist.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Commissioners approve reallocating health department funds
