Opinion ID: 1848533
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: federal handbook.

Text: A publication of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, entitled Handbook of Public Assistance Administration, includes this paragraph: Prompt, definitive and final administrative action will be taken within sixty days from the date of the request for a fair hearing. The claimant will be notified of the decision, in writing, in the name of the State agency, and, to the extent it is available to him, of his right to judicial review. [8] (Emphasis supplied.) In order to determine the effect of this handbook statement, it is necessary to consider the federal/state relationship involved a in the AFDC (and similar categorical aids) program. A beginning is this quotation from a recent United States Supreme Court decision: The AFDC program is based on a scheme of cooperative federalism. . . . It is financed largely by the Federal Government, on a matching fund basis, and is administered by the States. States are not required to participate in the program, but those which desire to take advantage of the substantial federal funds available for distribution to needy children are required to submit an AFDC plan for the approval of the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.. . . The plan must conform with several requirements of the Social Security Act and with rules and regulations promulgated by HEW. . . . [9] It is the federal Social Security Act which contains the basic conditions for allocation of federal funds to the several states for the special purposes here involved. However, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare may also promulgate certain requirements, in conformity with the Social Security Act, with which a proposed state plan for participation in the funds and program must comply. The handbook details a variety of provisions which the states are urged to include in their state plan in order to insure its being acceptable to the secretary and likely to be approved by him. All of this is material only as to whether or not the state plan is to be approved by the secretary. Once such plan is approved, the responsibility for administration is placed upon the state. The state plan is not some vague or formless set of regulations. It consists of the state legislation and administrative rules and regulations enacted pursuant thereto. The state legislation and regulations do not have added to them every suggestion in an earlier-issued federal handbook put out to inform states as to what they should include in their plan. If the state plan submitted does not include all handbook suggestions, it is for the secretary to determine whether the plan as submitted is to be approved. He approves or rejects the plan as submitted. He cannot approve a plan as submitted, after grafting onto it everything contained in a handbook. At least he did not. We do not deal here with the matter of withholding federal funds because of the manner in which a matching fund program is being administered. We are asked where one looks to determine the rights of recipients of certain categorical aids and we hold one looks to the federal statutes, the responsive state statutes and the valid rules and regulations adopted by the state agency charged with administering the program. We conclude that no federal statute, no federal regulation, or no state statute has set a sixty-day limit for conducting the review hearing by the state department in the situation here presented.