Real estate property owners unhappy with their assessments are still often waiting too long on their appeals to the Maryland Tax Court, auditors found, a problem that has persisted since an audit three years ago. But taxpayers can look forward to shorter waiting times to hear their appeals, despite a 25% reduction in staff and a 25% increase in the court’s work load, the court’s chief judge promised.
Read MoreThe Executive Department and governor’s office had missing computer equipment, improper handling of cash receipts and unreliable inventory records, state auditors found, and some of the problems had been uncovered in previous audits.
Read MoreRepublicans in the General Assembly are proposing a constitutional amendment to create an elected state inspector general to root out waste, fraud and financial problems in state agencies.
Read MoreThe state health department has continued to fail to control issuance of birth certificates, leading to potential fraud, auditors found — a ongoing problem they had identified a dozen years ago.
Read MoreIn the review of all government agencies over last three years, 47 state agencies have had perfectly clean audits with no problems found.
Read MoreThe Infectious Disease and Environmental Health Administration didn’t have adequate procedures to verify that claims paid by its drug assistance program for AIDS were legitimately filled, nor did it monitor inspectors at some of its food and milk processing plants, according to an audit released Monday.
Auditors found that the agency didn’t have good enough oversight system in place for monitoring the pharmacies it gave $29 million in fiscal 2009. “People were paid, but not authorized,” Legislative Auditor Bruce Myers said.
Read MoreOutgoing Juvenile Services Secretary Donald DeVore told the legislature’s Joint Audit Committee Tuesday that when he received the findings of a scathing audit that exposed a host of large problems with record-keeping, financial management, contracts, monitoring and personnel in his department, he didn’t get defensive.
Instead, DeVore got to work.
Read MoreAuditors said the State Treasurer’s Office needs to improve oversight over how it manages finances and oversees the rest of the state’s money, according to a report released by the Office of Legislative Audits on Friday.
Legislative Auditor Bruce Myers said that there was nothing that really stood out among the findings in the audit of the operations of the Treasurer’s Office, which indicated 12 areas where improvements could be made. Treasurer Nancy Kopp wrote a very detailed response to the audit, pointing out exactly how each issue had been addressed.
Read MoreBecause of failures to review driving records, the Motor Vehicle Administration sometimes left drivers on the road who should have had their licenses suspended, state auditors found. The department also failed to fully investigate potential fraud issuing licenses among employees, and lacked proper control over information, according to a report released Wednesday by the Office of Legislative Audits.
Read MoreAfter an audit this summer pointed out that the State Board of Elections did not tightly control its voter registration system, changes have been made – but their effectiveness won’t be proven until Sept. 14.
The critical report, released by the Office of Legislative Audits in June, noted that the state board did little oversight to ensure that changes to voter rolls – the responsibility of county boards – were correct. Additionally, reviews were not done to ensure that convicted felons were actually removed from voter rolls by county boards. Auditors looked at records for 22 convicted felons, and found that seven of them still had voting privileges.
Read MoreThe Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission has been faulted for spending millions of dollars for services without properly seeking competitive bids, executing a contract or requesting approval from the Board of Public works — all of which are in violation of state procurement regulations.
The findings come from a report released Monday by the Office of Legislative Audits. All told, the spending adds up to about $2.7 million.
Read MoreMaryland government agencies will have to reconcile more than $50 million that was misplaced, forgotten or unaccounted for in fiscal 2009, according to an audit released this week.
The Office of Legislative Audits looked at the closeout of the fiscal year, and found that several agencies miscalculated their assets or debts at the end of last June.
The explanations range from federal cash that never got claimed to money that was counted twice. Officials said the damage would likely be spread around the responsible state agencies, or rolled over to next year.
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