(The Center Square) — An audit of the Department of Legal Affairs by the Florida Auditor General found some deficiencies in the management of taxpayer funds.
The department prosecutes criminal racketeering, enforces consumer protection, antitrust, and civil rights laws, operates the Medicaid fraud unit, and administers assistance to the Division of Victims of Services. Overall the department has an appropriation of approximately $390.7 million.
State Financial Assistance is provided to non-state entities by the department to carry out state projects. It is required by law to be administered by the Department of Financial Services, Auditor General rules, and the Florida Single Audit Act.
According to state law, any entity that spends $750,000 or more in state-allocated funds within any fiscal year must obtain an audit conducted by an independent auditor. The recipient must additionally send a Financial Reporting Package to the AG and the agency that awarded the funds within 45 days of receiving it and no later than 9 months after the end of that fiscal year.
The audit found that despite the department having procedures and policies for audit requirements, personnel within the Division of Victim Services and the Bureau of General Services did not always comply with these requirements.
The AG reviewed eight state-fund recipients who had collectively received around $28 million — whose responsibility was split between the division and the bureau — and found that both the division and the bureau had not adequately maintained logs or kept track of when financial reports were due.
In response, division management stated that they were unaware that they needed to keep track of financial reports, which was six in total.
Furthermore, the AG found that division records did not provide evidence that the division had received or reviewed one financial report, four others weren’t reviewed for up to 21 months after being received, and one other financial report was missing its review date altogether. Division management claimed that changes in staff responsibilities and workload issues had caused the lack of documentation and delays.
The bureau had similar issues, citing staff turnover as the reason why management was unable to produce evidence of when financial report packages had been received or whether they had been reviewed at all by personnel.
The AG recommended that the department enhance audit oversight policies, procedures and processes to ensure financial reporting packages are received and processed promptly.
