YELLOW SHEET
Office of the State Auditor of Missouri
Claire McCaskill
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YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
Report No. 2006-18
March 2006
The United States Congress passed the Single Audit Act of 1996 to establish uniform requirements for audits of federal awards administered by states, local governments, and non-profit organizations. The Single Audit includes the federal awards expended by all state agencies, except for the public universities and various financing authorities which provide their financial information directly to the federal government. State agencies expended $8.59 billion of federal grant funds during the year ended June 30, 2005. Expenditures of federal awards have increased significantly over the past five years. Although nineteen state departments and other state offices expended federal awards, six state departments expended the bulk of the federal awards (96 percent). These six departments are: Social Services, Transportation, Labor and Industrial Relations, Elementary and Secondary Education, Health and Senior Services, and Public Safety. Overall, the state expended federal awards in 316 different programs.
Unallowable costs were charged to the State Homeland Security Grant Program, including costs of $33,320 for the 2004 Governor's Meth Summit. These costs were improperly charged to the Federal Fiscal Year 2003 State Homeland Security Grant Program (SHSGP) Part II � Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) allocation during the year ended June 30, 2005. These costs were questioned because the summit did not provide specific CIP training. Additionally, during the year ended June 30, 2005, cellular phone, wireless personal digital assistants, and satellite phone monthly service fees totaling $38,684 were improperly charged to the same grant program by the city of St. Louis.
In addition, the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) has not established adequate procedures to minimize time elapsing between the transfer of funds from the U.S. Treasury and disbursement. In one instance, the SEMA mistakenly drew down $517,400 twice resulting in a balance of over $465,000 which took 90 days to completely disburse.
Several areas of concern were noted with the Office of the Secretary of State - Help America Vote Act grant funds including subrecipient monitoring, the amount of time elapsing between the transfer of funds from the state and subsequent disbursement by the subrecipients, recording of capital assets, and compliance with federal requirements over maintenance of effort, suspension and debarment, and federal reporting.
The Department of Mental Health � Office of Audit Services performed a review and questioned costs of $18,731 of the Missouri Statewide Parent Advisory Network. Questioned costs included services not being properly documented, employee time being charged and billed to more than one funding agency, and payment of conference expenses that were not approved.
Eligibility and payment documentation could not be located for some Department of Social Services (DSS)-Children's Division (CD) Foster Care Title IV-E cases reviewed. We reviewed eligibility documentation for 62 Foster Care benefit recipients. Their Foster Care assistance totaled $425,508 during the year ending June 30, 2005. We could not locate invoices or other adequate supporting documentation for some payments on 63 percent of cases reviewed. We questioned costs of $23,748. A similar condition was also noted in our prior report.
Included in the single audit report are recommendations related to subrecipient monitoring in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, State Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Social Services � Children's Division. Recommendations regarding cost allocation procedures and food stamp quality control review documentation at the Department of Social Services are also included.
Also included in the report are recommendations, and in some cases questioned costs, related to federal programs previously included in other reports issued by the Missouri State Auditor�s Office. These include Department of Social Services - Family Support Services undistributed child support collections (Report No. 2005-56), the Parents� Fair Share Program (Report No. 2004-90), and the Vocational Rehabilitation Program at the Department of Social Services - Family Support Division - Rehabilitation Services for the Blind (Report No. 2005-93).