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 ASG Treasury will not pay federally funded
salaries
without grantor approval
Written approval from federal grantors will now be required before ASG Treasurer Velega Savali agrees to pay any government employees whose salaries are federally funded.
Currently, as has been the practice in the past years, the ASG would cover the salaries and wait to be reimbursed after the funds are drawn down. However, Velega says that this system is now history.
He said that he is tired of being blamed for the significantly high number of transfers which generally occur when charges are transferred from one account to another just to make ends meet until the federal funds are available.
According to Velega, several departments have tried to work on arrangements with the payroll division to charge salaries to different accounts until reimbursements can be made when the federal grants are drawn down.
But Velega, who has often described the transfer of funds as “a big mess,” said that to avoid anymore confusion, he will not approve any payments funded under federal grants unless he receives written notification from a federal guarantor that the charges are allowable.
ASG audits have revealed numerous instances of transferring charges from one account to another and Velega said that his new policy is the first step in trying to straighten out a big problem that he believes was ignored for many years and should have been addressed earlier.
One government director, whose office is federally funded, said that there should be no problems as an agreement has been in place for many years, whereby ASG covers the salaries until the federal funds are drawn down – (usually three months into the start of a new fiscal year).
“This may have been the practice for many years but it stops now!” Velega said. He reiterated that unless the department submits a written guarantee from the federal grantor that funds will be available to cover payroll, payments will not be approved.
And there’s no way around it. Velega says that a system is in place to ensure that once an account is blocked, absolutely no checks can be issued.
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