Public Safety and Public Health Payroll Expenses Are Now Reimbursable
Public safety and public health payroll expenses
Pursuant to updated US Treasury Guidance dated September 2nd, 2020 and US Treasury OIG Revised Frequently Asked Questions dated September 21st, 2020; for administrative convenience, a government can presume that all payroll costs for public health and public safety employees are payments for services substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency and, thus, can be covered by the CRF.
In response to questions regarding which employees are within the scope of this accommodation, public safety employees would include police officers, sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, firefighters, emergency medical responders, correctional and detention officers, and those who directly support such employees such as dispatchers and supervisory personnel. Public health employees would include employees involved in providing medical and other health services to patients and supervisory personnel, as well as employees of public health departments directly engaged in matters related to public health and related supervisory personnel. Administrative positions, such as accounting or business operations, are not permissible.
The first reimbursement request should be for payroll costs incurred beginning March 1, 2020 through September 30, 2020. Additional reimbursement requests may be submitted monthly if allocated funds are available. These reimbursement requests should contain payroll, time, and or human resource records to support the submitted costs incurred for payroll expenses. In addition, your submitted records should clearly demonstrate that the public safety and public health positions submitted for reimbursement are limited to the positions listed in the above paragraph. Finally, a Local Participant must maintain general and subsidiary ledgers used to account for the receipt of CRF payment(s) and subsequent disbursements, along with budgetary records to support fiscal years 2019 and 2020.
The IFA highly encourages Local Participants to maximize reimbursement for public safety and public health eligible expenses over other designated expense categories. Please note that the IFA will make reimbursement requests for public safety and public health payroll expenses a priority for review over all other designated expense categories submitted.
IFA CRF Presentation to AIC on Payroll Expenses