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LINCOLN — Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley has called out a state agency for allowing "out- rageous” dysfunction in a pub - licly funded program that provides personal assistance to people with disabilities.
In an 11-page letter Monday to Steve Corsi, chief executive of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Foley's team alleged "ongoing financial abuse" in the personal assistance services (PAS) program that helps Medicaideligible Nebraskans with mobility, hygiene and housekeeping.
“Numerous PAS caregivers con tinue to milk the program with false, inflated and duplicate billings," Foley said, adding that the alarm to DHHS was his o$ce's third since February 2024.
Information uncovered by the audit team was forwarded to law enforcement for review of possible legal violations.
In one case, the auditors said, a caregiver had been authorized to de liver 66 hours of personal assistance services a week despite holding down a full-time job as a school bus driver. Auditors identified 28 days during which the caregiver billed DHHS for performing client services at the exact times she was documented to have been driving students. In another example, Foley described a personal caregiver who billed DHHS for 70 days of client services while working full-time for a family counseling business. He said that created an “impossible scenario” of the caregiver working more than 24 hours in each of 45 days during a three-month period reviewed.
“Some of these caregivers claim to be performing work schedules that would make the Energizer Bunny look like a slacker," said Foley.
That caregiver had tapped into other public programs as well, including the larger personal care services (PCS) budget and foster care. Particularly troubling to the auditor was that the caregiver in that case provided help to two adult clients who lived in her home. And one, a relative, was on the sex oender registry for having been convicted of felony sex tra$cking of children in 2014. Living in the home as well, said Foley, was a 14-year-old girl in the state foster care system.
He said the caregiver appeared to have been purposefully deceitful in failing to disclose to foster care agencies that the past oender lived in the house. In seeking personal care aid, the provider reportedly claimed the relative lived in a back yard "cabin," for which cleaning was authorized.
"When the audit team reported this bizarre and unsafe domestic ar rangement, DHHS removed the foster child from the home," Foley said.
The findings surfaced during the ongoing statewide annual audit and were reported to Corsi early due to "urgent need for corrective action," the letter said.
For fiscal year 2025, PAS expenses totaled $10.5 million, of which the federal government covers 60% of costs and the state pays 40%.
