07/28/2022 - Jefferson City, Mo.
State Auditor Nicole Galloway today released her office's review of how
Missouri state agencies managed and spent more than $20.6 billion in federal
funds during fiscal year 2021. This year's Statewide Single Audit reviewed 20
federal programs within 10 state agencies.
"Billions of dollars have been sent to state agencies from the
federal government for specific programs, including many new programs related
to COVID-19 recovery," Auditor Galloway said. "State agencies need to
be accountable for how these taxpayer funds are used, especially given the
unprecedented amount of federal funding that is flowing into Missouri."
The audit of the
state's financial statements and expenditures of federal awards for the fiscal
year ended June 30, 2021 contains 22 findings, a significant increase
from the prior year's seven findings. Three are repeat findings from the last
two to seven years. Half of the 22 findings relate to concerns surrounding
compliance with federal rules for social service and health care assistance through
Medicaid and other federal programs. In a repeat finding from prior years,
auditors noted that the Department of Social Services still has not corrected
system overrides for some Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program
participants. Auditors
also found the Department lacked adequate controls to prevent overpayments of
subsidies to child care providers.
The
federal Department of Health and Human Services disbursed approximately $22.7
million to Missouri through the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for
Infectious Diseases (ELC) program. The state's Department of Health and Senior
Services (DHSS) utilized this program to fund testing, contact tracing,
vaccinations, and other COVID-19 activities by 123 subrecipients, including
county and city health departments. However, auditors found that the DHSS did
not have adequate procedures to ensure ELC reimbursements to subrecipients were
allowable, reasonable, and supported with sufficient documentation. As a
result, unsupported reimbursements were made to some subrecipients. In
addition, the DHSS did not adequately monitor the ELC program subrecipients.
Additionally,
the report identified improvements needed for internal controls and monitoring
of the more than $323 million in federal emergency rental assistance passed
through the Missouri Department of Economic Development to the Missouri Housing
Development Commission (MHDC). Auditors also found that the Department failed
to report $337 million in federal COVID-19 relief aid for renters and homeowners
in their required accounting reports of federal awards.
System
controls in the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations' UInteract system
were not sufficient to prevent or detect improper payments authorized by an
employee totaling approximately $123,000 during fiscal years 2020 and 2021. In
fiscal year 2021, unemployment insurance program expenditures totaled more than
$3.4 billion, including more than $2.7 billion in federal benefits and $661
million in state benefits paid to Missouri workers.
A complete
copy of the Statewide Single Audit for fiscal year 2021 is available here.
