(The Center Square) – A recent audit of Illinois’ Emergency Management Agency revealed oversight deficiencies of contracted employees and the working hours the state was billed for them.
The audit found one company was paid roughly $78 million in taxpayer funds to be on standby.
State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, chairs the Legislative Audit Commission and put forward the resolution to audit the performance of IEMA-OHS after issues with the agency’s previous director and assistant director.
Rose explained the basis of the issues found within the audit.
“Rather than track the overtime hours and the hours and the time sheets that were coming in from the contractors, they hired a contractor to track those hours. They didn’t track that contractor. And so none of it was done properly,” Rose said.
Rose told The Center Square he thinks the audit’s findings are consistent with other recent audits, all of which he said point to mismanagement of executive state agencies.
“If you look under Governor Pritzker’s eight years as governor, the number of you know, the number of audit findings, the number of repeat audit findings have all gone up. Which just leads to a general conclusion that he is a terrible manager,” Rose said.
One key finding in the audit report Rose noted was the $435,000 salary for a contracted employee serving as a temporary executive assistant to the department’s director from November 2022 to October 2023.
Alicia Tate-Nadeau served as the agency’s director until her retirement last year. The time period the audit was focused on was under her leadership, but she left her role and Ted Berger has taken over.
“When this audit comes up – and this happens time and again – where there’s a problem, suddenly that director’s gone and then they insert a new director who comes in to try to clean up the agency,” Rose said. “When the new director comes in, one of the first questions I have for them is who was this person making $435,000 in a year to temporarily replace an executive assistant?”
Rose said not a single state agency or commission head makes as much in a year as the contracted assistant did. In the most recent state budget, no agency or commission head in Illinois made over $238,800.
IEMA-OHS’s Melissa Hahn, the deputy public information officer, shared a statement noting that COVID-19 response was part of the reason for the agency’s oversight issue of contractors.
“COVID-19 was an unprecedented disaster that required an unprecedented response by the State and its agencies. IEMA-OHS takes seriously the findings and recommendations of the Legislative Audit Commission, as well as its own internal reviews of its disaster response, and is in the process of reviewing the final report,” read the statement.
Rose said COVID is a factor, but not the full reason for the audit or its findings.
“Certainly some of those contractors, some of the contracts on the stand-down hours were related to COVID, but this is inherently the process when you have a governor who does not appoint effective managers on the front end,” Rose said.
He said he has more questions about the audit’s details, which he plans to have answered at the next commission hearing Sept. 9.
