Employer Authority vs. Budget Authority in Self-Direction, With Examples

When you start looking into Self-Direction, two phrases come up right away: employer authority and budget authority. They sound like legal terms, but the idea behind them is practical. They describe what you get to control.

Employer authority: control over your staff

With employer authority, you recruit, hire, train, schedule, and supervise the people who provide support. If a staff member isn't working out, you can end their employment.

The Fiscal Intermediary is the legal employer on paper and handles the payroll and hiring checks, but the day-to-day decisions about staff are yours.

For example: your daughter has known a neighbor's college-age son for years and is comfortable with him. With employer authority, you can hire him for community habilitation hours, set a schedule around her week, and show him exactly how she likes things done.

Budget authority: control over the money

With budget authority, you decide how the approved self-direction budget is spent, choosing which supports and services to buy and who provides them. This is where Personal Resource Accounts, budget line items, and a Support Broker come in.

For example: instead of a fixed day program five days a week, your son's budget pays for two days of a job coach, a weekly pottery class, a gym membership, and staff hours to get him to all of it.

Do you need both?

Not necessarily. Some families want to choose their staff but are happy with the services themselves being fairly standard. Others want the flexibility of designing the whole week. Many use both.

A few questions help:

• Is there a specific person you want to hire? That points toward employer authority.
• Do existing programs fit how your family member actually lives? If not, budget authority gives you room to build something that does.
• How much management can your family realistically take on? Both kinds of authority come with responsibility, though a Support Broker shares much of the planning load with budget authority.

Next steps

Talk with your Care Manager about which options fit. Our Self-Direction guide walks through the full process, and our post on Self-Direction vs. agency services covers the bigger choice.

Sources: OPWDD, Self-Direction; OPWDD Self-Direction Guidance (March 2022).