LEGISLATIVE JOINT AUDITING- STATE AGENICES

AI recap

Transcript

All right, thank you for being here. You know, motion to adopt the minutes from our September 10th meeting. We've got a motion in a second, any comments on that? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Post same sign. Minutes are adopted. Now we will review the reports. Mr. Bolington. Right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today, we're presenting two reports with findings. And we also have seven reports without findings. And these are listed on page one of the audit summary. And staff recommends we file the reports without findings. Thank you, Mr. Bolington. Any comments? Okay. We've got a motion to file in a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Post same sign. New business. Our next meeting will be held. Oh, we've got the final report. No, I apologize. I skipped one. That was all within that. Okay, Mr. Bolington. Okay. All right, so the first report we have with findings today is the Department of Health FY25 report. And this report contains one finding. The AC awarded a contract to a vendor by competitive sealed building bidding for cancer research services that were already covered under the scope of two existing contracts with the same vendor. The contract was amended in its second year to include calls from the prior two contracts that were not included in the original bid price. The value of the contract was materially modified in a manner that resulted in a significant value of the contract not being competitively procured. That concludes the findings for the Department of Health, Mr. Chair, AC representatives are here to answer committee questions. Can I get you all from the Department of Health to come up, please? If you'll introduce yourself for the record. Don Adams, Department of Health Chief of Staff. Matt Gailmore Department of Health. Mr. Adams, Mr. Gailmore, thank you for being here today. Do you want to walk us through what's going on here and what happened? Sure, thank you. The cancer registry that's mandated by legislation is managed at the Department of Health. It is primarily funded with federal grants through the CDC. And those federal grants require us to provide a lot of functions in relation to the registry. And we contract a lot of that specialized work out. And at one time, we had three different contracts that covered some of these required functions. And those functions are interrelated and they were all with one company. Now, all three contracts were procured competitively. But we were trying to combine all of those contracts into one which would be preferred, one vendor to do all of them since they were interrelated. And so we made some procedures, errors, and combining those. Now, even though each one of them was procured individually and the total price of the combined new contract was equal to the three individually, we should have put the collective work back out for solicitation and we did not do that. So it didn't cost the state any more money, but we didn't follow procurement procedures as we should have. Once this came to our attention, we stopped the contract and now we have that back out for a competitive bid. I appreciate that explanation. Committee members, do you have any questions? Mr. Gilman, we've got a motion to file in a second in the discussion. You're none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed, same sign? It's filed, thank you, gentlemen. Okay, we've got one more report with findings in this Department of Labor in licensing FI-25 report and this report also contains one finding. Our initial review of travel expenditures and reimbursements for compliance with state travel regulations included multiple deficiencies for one employee. Testing was expanded to include all myler's reimbursements paid to this employee from July 1st, 2024 through the end of our audit field work, which was May 18th, 2026. Although some of the employees travel, although some of the employees travel reimbursements do not follow state travel regulations, AC management allowed the following deficiencies. Commute miles which are not allowed were claimed on the travel reimbursement forms resulting in an overpayment, totaling over $1,900. Excess mileage claimed on the travel reimbursement forms due to not claiming the shortest major highway route resulted in an overpayment, totaling $229, and duplication of miles of reimbursements resulted in an overpayment, totaling $219. So the total of all these deficiencies resulted in a total overpayment of almost $2,400. In addition, the employee's personal vehicle was used when the AC state issue vehicle was available, resulting in miles reimbursements claimed of over $800 for state physical year 25 and over $900 in state physical year 26th through the end of our field work. The AC has assigned agreement with the employee to make a one-time payment to cover the duplicate mileage of $219 and to begin making bi-weekly payments in September of this year for the remaining overpayment balance. Mr. Chair, that concludes the findings for the Labor Department. A is your representative here to answer questions. Thank you, Tom. We've got a question. Could we get some folks from the Department to come up please and introduce yourself and you'll be recognized. Thank you for coming. Representative Meeks, you have a question. Yes, Mr. Chairman, this is for staff. It says you all found the deficiencies on one employee, did y'all test any other employees or were there any other problems with that? We had a bigger sample. This is the one that we noticed the problems with. Okay, so out of the entire sample, we just had this one issue. Yes, sir. Okay, and then my question to the department, I'm assuming this was a training issue and that seems like that a sense been resolved. Yes, sir. Okay, all right, thank you. Any other questions? Is there a motion file? And a second, all those in? Is there any discussion on the motion? You're none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Post same sign. Thank you for coming. All right, our next meeting will be December 3rd, 2026. If there's no other business, we are adjourned.