Hill County working to solve Council on Aging funding issue

Hill County appears to be taking action to solve a problem at the Hill County Council on Aging which has the potential to cost the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funding in the coming months.

A county official said Wednesday afternoon that reports to the state that had not been done, holding up state funding to the council, were now being taken care of.

The issue originates from a backlog of unfinished reporting from the Council on Aging to the state, or its overseeing organization, which has caused the state to withhold a substantial amount of funding the organization would normally get.

Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services Communications Officer Holly Matkin said the money hasn’t been fully withdrawn, but is being held until the reporting is complete.

Matkin said the state fully funded the council through February of this year, but until the several months of unfinished reporting is made up, the council’s March payment of $33,000 and any subsequent payments are on hold.

This issue was brought up during a working meeting of the Hill County Commission last week when Hill County Commissioner Sheri Williams said a substantial amount of the council’s funding had seemingly disappeared.

This prompted Hill County Clerk and Recorder Lexis Dockter to say that the state had withdrawn funding from the council due to unfinished reporting on the organization’s grant use.

Dockter said this is an issue she had brought to the commission before, but Williams claimed that she’d asked Dockter about the matter more than once without getting a straight answer.

In last week’s meeting, Dockter said after the council’s previous director Bill Lanier, who would normally be doing those reports, left his position last year, there was a period of time when responsibility for the council was passed on to the Hill County Commission, which would have taken on responsibility for that reporting while they looked for a new director.

That new director, Heather Sinclair, took her position later that year but said after last week’s meeting that she was completely unaware of this issue.

Williams, who had taken point on managing the council in the absence of a director before Sinclair was hired, claimed that this reporting was Dockter’s responsibility, as well as the responsibility of Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown.

Dockter and Brown both denied that this was the case, as department heads have always been responsible for grant reporting in the past, and the former said she had never been told by the commission that this reporting was her responsibility.

Wednesday morning, Sinclair said she still hadn’t heard from the commission about the issue and all the information she had came from the state.

Sinclair said the council had enough money that they could cover their normal operations for the next few months, but that would change unless some kind of decision regarding the grant reporting was made.

“It’s not a big scare right now, but it will be,” she said.

Shortly after speaking to Sinclair, The Havre Daily News reached out to the commission about what Sinclair had said, and about two hours later Hill County Commission Chair Mark Peterson responded saying that the reporting responsibilities had been passed to Sinclair and the issue was being dealt with “as we speak.”

Matkin said the Hill County Council on Aging will have to submit these reports to the Area III Agency on Aging, which will be handling future oversight of grant reporting and be the pass-through organization for the funds, instead of the state directly.