Democratic/Progressive auditor candidate Doug Hoffer Tuesday criticized incumbent state auditor Tom Salmon for spending an average of $158,000 per performance audit in recent years. Performance audits generally scrutinize government programs and initiatives.
Government letters obtained by Hoffer show that the state auditor’s office spent about $2.36 million over state fiscal years 2010-2012, or from about July 2009 to July 2012. Costs increased from almost $667,000 in fiscal year 2010 to about $925,000 in fiscal 2012, with 15 performance audits done in the three-year period.
In a statement, Hoffer said: “Having read the reports and produced similar work on my own in the past, these costs are excessive and raise questions about the management of the Auditor’s budget and staff resources.”
In the same statement, he added: “The cost of reviewing state programs seems to have gone off the rails.”
Tom Salmon, who is not running for the auditor post, in turn blasted Hoffer’s attack as another “classic, not fully informed, Hoffer cheap shot.” He disputed Hoffer’s $158,000 figure as inaccurate, describing it as a “limited analysis” and “not factually correct, in a transparent way.”
Salmon couldn’t, however, provide concrete figures to back up his assertions. Salmon estimated that an audit done according to generally accepted government standards could cost up to $200,000, but said that costs varied significantly between audits.
Salmon estimated that his office had prevented over $6 million in wrongful payments through their performance audits, though they didn’t track the individual savings per audit. He also took the opportunity to snipe at Hoffer’s “negative” and “sensationalist” campaign tactics, saying that this approach hadn’t changed from their contest in 2010.
In a statement, Salmon said: “The hours [per performance audit] are driven by complexity of the subject matter and scope of the audit, among other things. As a result, it is misleading to calculate an average cost per audit and then use that number to gauge its value or effectiveness.”
Hoffer believed he could keep average audit costs below $100,000 and increase the number of performance audits by 50 percent. “It appears Salmon is just not managing his resources very well,” said Hoffer, calling for greater supervision and collaboration with staff. Unnecessary expansion of audit scope, Hoffer suspected, might account for some of the costs and hours worked.
The last time Hoffer had performed work similar to a performance-style audit was in 2006. Although Hoffer conceded the high quality of the performance audits, he said, “Anyone who believes one of those reports should take 6,000 hours of work is on drugs,” referring to his estimate of how many government hours a $200,000 audit could involve.
“If you were auditing an entity of massive size, and had a huge scope of work, then sure, but most of the reports are nothing like that.”
Caught somewhat in the middle, Republican auditor candidate Sen. Vince Illuzzi remarked: “You can’t sit back and criticize the professional staff at the auditor’s office until you know the size and scope of the performance audit, and what findings came from it.”
Based on his view from the Senate’s appropriations committee, which oversees the auditor’s office, said Illuzzi, Salmon had admirably managed his office’s performance audits over the last few years.
