Navajo County has been going through a re-education and training process for some program managers after a fiscal year audit from an outside agency determined that federal grant funds provided for several programs had been mishandled and inaccurately reported.
According to Assistant County Manager Homero Vela, the findings from the audit showed that there were a number of incidents involving grant funds administered by a number of program managers.
“There were some findings that we have taken corrective action on. The Public Health Department has many grants that need to be reviewed every month and this was not being done on time. It was also found that there were travel expenses that had not been approved by the county manager, which is required when it exceeds a certain dollar amount,” explained Vela.
Finance Director James Menlove outlined some of the issues that were discovered and addressed. One was that the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funds had been left off the schedule of expenditures in a federal award. He noted that the schedule in that instance was corrected and no improprieties were found.
Another was $60,000 in funds that were awarded to schools in the county through Title I funds that were actually supposed to go toward Title III programs that involve fire protection plans. Those funds were not refunded from school districts, but were taken from the final distribution of funds made to the districts for the last fiscal year.
The remaining issues were fund accountability in the Public Health District, and primarily involved reporting and accountability issues.
According to Menlove, the health district is awarded 15 to 20 grants each year, with a portion of those funds to be used for wages and salaries. “The auditor felt that there was not enough detail to account for the funds spent on the time reported. We believe the employee did spend the correct time, but that it wasn’t reported well on the time sheets. We were able to go back and review the work that was completed, and have been able to sufficiently account for that time for the auditor,” he stated.
Public Health Emergency Preparation was another grant in which corrective measures had to be taken. In that grant $1,800 in expenditures were understated and $2,000 were overstated. “There was a duplication in the reporting of expenditures that were reported in two reporting areas. The end result was that there was $200 that was over reported, and that amount was reimbursed to the Arizona Department of Health Services,” stated Menlove.
Regarding that same grant, Menlove noted that the auditor found that there was not enough documentation to account for the matching funds that the county was to provide through in-kind services such as office space. “The auditor felt that $20,000 could not be verified for the matching requirement. We went through and worked with the auditor general, and were able to account for all of it,” he explained.
Another grant for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, had insufficient documentation for the time spent on that program. There were also reports that had not been submitted within the required timeframe and duplicate reporting on expenditures. “We were able to sort through the documentation and ended up having to pay approximately $14,000 back to the Department of Health to correct the error,” he said.
Menlove clarified that there was no fraud in any of the reported incidents, that a sufficient paper trail was used to correct the errors made and that every error was accounted for by the Finance Department to the satisfaction of the auditor.
“We have since been going through the process of re-educating and retraining our program managers regarding the grants management process. We have also hired a grants coordinator who will work with each of the departments to ensure issues such as these don’t occur again,” said Menlove.
Other problems that have been addressed were hotel expenses that were made without the approval of the county manager when they exceeded the established limits. While those amounts were in the range of $5 to $20, the county still requires that all amounts be approved before they are expended and that had not taken place.
According to Lynda Young, who now serves as the county’s communication director, but was the Community Service instructor earlier in the year, the health district had also made errors in the competitive purchasing process for services, although the proper bid process had been utilized and no overpayment had taken place. She noted, “There were errors, but it was primarily due to single source providers for our area, but the process should have been handled differently.”
Young has worked with the grant providers throughout the corrective process and feels confident that future grant funding is not in jeopardy. “I’ve worked directly with the affected grant providers, and they were very appreciative of our transparency and our efforts to correct any errors,” she noted.
Both Menlove and Young stated that they felt confident that such problems would not be reoccurring in the future. “The program managers with the health district are doing an excellent job with their programs. They are diligent in keeping track of everything from the number of vaccinations they administer to how many snacks they give out. They just need more of an education regarding the finance end of grant funding,” Young concluded.
