Legislative Session number- 82

Bill Name: SF1851

Consolidating the Minnesota family investment program and basic sliding fee
child care assistance programs; defining or redefining certain terms for child
care programs purposes; establishing a child care assistance program to
subsidize the child care costs of eligible families, authorizing funding by
county contributions, state appropriations and federal funds and specifying
certain requirements of the services and enrolled families; establishing a child
support collection account in the special revenue fund for the deposit of
collections from the assignment of child support to the state under certain
public assistance programs and appropriating money in the account to the
commissioner of children, families and learning for child care assistance;
specifying child care assistance program general and income eligibility
requirements, requiring family participation in certain activities relating to
employment or post-secondary education and providing for continued eligibility;
providing for the calculation of assistance benefits, prohibiting counties from
limiting the duration of assistance for students, exception; providing for
continuation of assistance upon moving to another county and for the date of
eligibility for assistance; modifying certain duties of the commissioner
relating to child care services, requiring the commissioner to recover from
counties state or federal money spent for ineligible persons, exception,
requiring counties to pay a share proportional to federal earnings under certain
conditions; requiring the commissioner to specify requirements for reports under
the same authority as the commissioner of human services and to notify counties
within a certain period of time of the approval of child care fund plans,
requiring withholding of county allocations until plan approval, specifying a
certain county services maintenance requirement; requiring the commissioner to
notify county and human services boards of the forms and instructions to follow
in the development of child care fund plans; authorizing commissioner periodic
payments to counties, authorizing the withholding of payments for incomplete or
untimely expenditure reports; requiring commissioner review of county use of
child care assistance program allocations, authorizing reallocation; authorizing
the commissioner to withhold, reduce or terminate allocations to counties for
noncompliance with certain requirements, requiring reallocation; requiring the
commissioner to receive, administer and expend funds available under the federal
child care and development fund and to allocate federal earnings to counties to
expand child care services to serve additional families; requiring the
commissioner to use a certain portion of available state and federal funds for
the child care assistance program for payments to counties for administrative
expenses; requiring the commissioner to determine the maximum rate for care
including special needs and handicapped care; specifying duties of counties
relating to extension of employment opportunities and application methods,
program administration contracts, assistance priority and waiting list
requirements, federal reimbursement maximization, child care fund plans, county
contributions and maintenance of funding effort, quality child care services
information, income redetermination, notice of child care assistance payment
amount and method, vendor payments and payments for absent children; requiring
the commissioner in cooperation of the commissioner of human services to enforce
the requirements for program integrity and fraud prevention investigations;
providing for county agency recovery of overpayments and for fair hearings and
informal conferences for applicants or recipients adversely affected by county
agency action; providing for child care assistance program funding, specifying
the allocation formula; providing for sliding and parent fees and for provider
choice, subsidy restrictions and rates; modifying certain provisions under the
at home infant child care program, changing references to the basic sliding fee
program to the child care assistance program; repealing certain provisions
relating to transition year families, the basic sliding fee program, the federal
child care and development fund and block grant, the MFIP child care assistance
program, the use of certain money, reporting and payments, financial and
employment or training eligibility, county contributions, the sliding fee scale,
child care rates, extension of employment opportunities, administrative expenses
and the fair hearing process(ra)