(The Center Square) — According to a recent audit by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office, the Louisiana Hazard Mitigation Grant Program had discrepancies of over $3.9 million in reimbursement requests.
The program, which is administered through the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, was audited for the period of Jan. 1, through June 30.
Auditors found exceptions of more than $500 per reimbursement request, totaling about $3.9 million, or over 13%, in 64 reimbursement requests.
An audit exception is any finding that falls outside of the expected results of an audit after going through the necessary steps. The problems cited fell into five categories: Lack of supporting documentation, missing procurement documentation, out-of-scope expenses, errors, and ineligible expenses.
The first and most expensive category was a lack of supporting documentation, which occurred in 35 requests. The expenses not supported by invoices, receipts, contracts, etc. totaled over $2.6 million and almost 68% of the exceptions.
Similarly, procurement of reimbursements over $10,000 were not documented correctly on 13 occasions. This equaled $750,000 in exception amount, or 19%.
Twelve reimbursement requests to the tune of $370,000 were given despite the work being outside the approved scope of the project. that means 9.5% of the exceptions came as a result of out-of-scope expenses.
Like in the case of out-of-scope expenses, some exceptions were ineligible expenses because the work didn’t comply with FEMA regulations. This only happened once, but amounted over $45,000 in exceptions nevertheless.
The final type of exception noted was errors, which could be a result of expenses duplicated, incorrect vendor information, and or incorrect invoice amounts. This happened three times, or 2% of the exceptions, and accounted for $88,000 in unaccounted for reimbursement money.
Hazard Mitigation Program officials responded to the audit saying although they had fewer incidences of exceptions than in past audits, they are continuing to improve on program management, diligence and accountability.
