- (a) Allowable Expenditures under Direct Services Support may include client intake, salaries, fringe benefits, and travel expenditures of staff when conducting outreach to eligible households; material and printing costs associated with outreach and targeting to eligible households.
- (b) Direct Services Support does not include computer purchases and related costs. These belong to Administration. Time/Expenditure Allocation for subrecipients shall demonstrate and document that they separately allocated the appropriate share of Direct Services Support time and expenditures to both outreach and targeting.
- (c) Allowable Administrative Costs for administrative activities may include planning, budgeting and accounting; establishing and directing policies, goals, and objectives, and other logistical activities not unique to the mission and goals of LIHEAP. Subrecipients earn administrative budget share based on expenditure of direct services funds. The Department calculates money available for subrecipient administrative activities as a percentage of Direct Services expenditures.
- (d) The Department and its subrecipients use the Uniform Grant Management Standards, OMB Circular A-87 for local governments or OMB Circular A-122 for non-profits for determination of allowable and allocable costs. OMB Circular A-133, "Audits of States, Local Governments, and Non-Profit Organizations," increases the threshold for audit from $300,000 to $500,000.
(e) To ensure fiscal compliance for this program, the Department may use the following fiscal controls:
- (1) review annual audits;
- (2) monitor fiscal records; and
- (3) review Monthly Expenditure and Performance Reports.
- (f) The Department staff may monitor LIHEAP programs through monthly performance reports and periodic on-site visits using a standard monitoring instrument for each program, designed to identify the agency's strengths and weaknesses. A risk assessment process will guide scheduling of visits to ensure that agencies ranking highest in risk will be monitored first.
- (g) The Department and its subrecipients shall cooperate in all audits and maintain records in acceptable format for audit purposes and will cooperate with any reasonable state or federal investigation requests.
Source Note:The provisions of this §6.209 adopted to be effective April 1, 2007, 32 TexReg 1739.