Division of Homeland Security
& Emergency Management
Kevin R. Klein, Director
9195 E. Mineral Avenue, Suite 200
Centennial, CO 80112
MEMORANDUM
Date:
18 June 2014
To:
Public Assistance Program Applicants
Colorado Counties, Inc.
Colorado Municipal League
Special District Association of Colorado
From:
Kevin Klein
Subject: Public Assistance Program Payment Improvements
There have been delays in getting reimbursement requests processed through the state for the FEMA Public
Assistance Program reimbursement requests. The attached Action Plan reviews areas of concern and
improvement actions for those areas.
Currently, we have 1,119 projects (totaling $294,996,263) that have been reviewed by FEMA. Of those, 59 are
still being reviewed for eligibility by FEMA, 17 were unobligated for donated resources and 38 have been deemed
ineligible. The current 1,005 eligible projects total $221,859,164, with $166,641,229 obligated for the federal
share.i We anticipate another 91 large projects to be approved by FEMA in the next month, for a total of $365M
in Public Assistance projects.
While $154,845,826 has been obligated for the federal share, it is important to remind everyone that the Public
Assistance Program is primarily a reimbursement program -- we cannot pay until the work is done, deemed
eligible and documented. Currently, we have received 129 requests for reimbursement for large projects
(>$67,500) totaling $19.5M; 44 of the total requests were received within the last two weeks. There are 74
requests in review, 37 requests were sent back with the applicant and are awaiting the applicant’s response, and
one request is on hold. After receiving additional information from the applicants, we were able to process 17
requests ($3,844,609.17) for payment. To date, we have not had a single request for large project reimbursement
that did not have to go back to the applicant for some corrective action, often times for simple issues such as
missing W-9 tax forms or missing electronic funds transfer information.
For small projects (<$67,500), we issue a purchase order and pay out 100 percent of the federal share and 50
percent of the state share in the first payment. Then the State creates a second payment to pay the remaining 50
percent of the State share when the applicant submits a signed form indicating that all project work is complete.
For these small projects we made 447 payments totaling $6.4M on 301 projects.ii
In order to help with cash flow, the Division is advancing $7.75M for current RFRs that have been in the queue
greater than four weeks, and $6.5M for advances requested by individual jurisdictions.

Colorado Department of Public Safety (CDPS) 
Stan Hilkey, Executive Director
Page 2
18 June 2014
As is shown in the attached plan, the Division identified several areas for improvement. The Division is committed
to streamlining its processes and is open to suggestions for further improvements. The Division initiated, and is
currently undergoing, an external review of our processes to ensure that they are not only efficient, but also meet
the minimum federal requirements. We will incorporate recommendations for improvement from the external
review into future improvements.
As most of you know, many of these projects will take years to complete. We developed our reimbursement
processes for the long-haul and to protect state and local governments from the risk of de-obligation and related
repayments of funds back to FEMA. Administration of the Public Assistance Program is a state responsibility and,
given the scale of this disaster, the state will be subject to an audit by the DHS Office of Inspector General. In a
recent Office of Inspector General report concerning their FFY 2012 audits, 33 percent ($415.6 million) of the
$1.25 billion audited was recommended for return to FEMA. Of that, $267.9 million was for ineligible expenses or
expenses that were not properly documented. The remaining $147.7 million was in unused funds.iii
While it has been difficult getting the system up and running, I am confident that we will see significant
improvements in the reimbursement process and we will have systems in place to streamline future disaster
recovery operations.
In addition to the improvements outlined in the attached, natural improvements in processing times are occurring
for the following reasons:
1) There is active learning for both the applicants and our staff on how the processes work. Simply put, we
are getting better at using our systems and communicating our needs to the applicants, and the
applicants are better addressing our documentation requirements.
2) Many contracts are now in place and we do not need to wait for them in order to process future requests
for reimbursement.
3) We are making sure we have the base documentation in place with the first request for reimbursement
on a project, which means subsequent requests can be processed without having additional
documentation. For example, a construction project will require an environmental review, once we
document the environmental review is complete for the first request, we do not have to do it for
subsequent requests.
Finally, we made a substantial investment in a Disaster Recovery Grants Management Portal which allows both
the applicants and the state to electronically submit, process and maintain applicant project records in a
systematic and standardized fashion. This software not only provides full transparency to our processes, allowing
applicants to track the progress of their requests for reimbursement, it also provides us with business
performance data. These data will be used to better identify sticking points and prioritize improvement
processes. The business performance data will be presented in a dashboard that we will make publically
available.
i
Federal share is not always 75%, .e.g, some alternative debris removal projects are on a sliding scale.
This number is actually larger, but these are the ones we have reconciled during our end of fiscal year closeout activities.
iii U.S. DHS, OIG‐14‐102‐D, June 2014, http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/GrantReports/2014/OIG_14-102-D_Jun14.pdf
ii

Colorado Department of Public Safety (CDPS) 
Stan Hilkey, Executive Director