Senior Community Service Employment

The Department of Labor administers the $440 million Senior Community Service Employment Program through grants to the states and 10 national organizations. The program finances part-time minimum-wage jobs each year for about 100,000 poor Americans aged 55 and older. These jobs, which are typically in schools, hospitals, senior citizen centers, and other community service activities, give seniors an opportunity to acquire skills that allow them to leave the program and find unsubsidized work. However, because the program operates in the same manner as it has since 1978 and because the states where concentrations of elderly Americans reside have changed since then, there is a mismatch between where the needy elderly live and where the subsidized positions are provided. GAO has suggested that in reauthorizing the Older Americans Act, Congress consider amending or eliminating the "hold harmless" provision, which guarantees that national sponsors can carry out the same level of activity in the states as they did in 1978, and increasing the portion of program grant funds allocated to state governments.

GAO noted that: (1) existing legislative requirements governing the allocations of SCSEP funds result in distributions of funds among and within states that do not match the distribution of the needy population; (2) the hold harmless provision, as interpreted by the Department of Labor, limits Labor's ability to allocate funds among states in a way that ensures that funds are provided to the states where the most needy elderly reside; (3) a majority of SCSEP funds are not responsive to population changes that have occurred since 1978 when the hold harmless provision was put in place because national sponsors are guaranteed the same level of activity in each state that they had in 1978; (4) in program year 1998, 63 percent of the total appropriation of $440 million was subject to the hold harmless provision; (5) in addition, because 78 percent of total appropriations go to national sponsors, some areas within states can be over- or underserved; (6) this annual appropriation provision has afforded the states a more limited role in ensuring a more equitable distribution of funds than was envisioned in the 1978 amendments, whereby states were to receive 55 percent of funds above the 1978 appropriation; (7) in GAO's 1995 SCSEP report, GAO presented matters for consideration by Congress that would: (a) amend or eliminate the hold harmless provision; and (b) increase the amount of funds allocated to the states; and (8) GAO believes that these options remain valid today.