The Vermont State Auditor’s Office announced Monday that it will perform audits of the Agency of Education, the Vermont Judiciary and the Department of Taxes over the next year. In addition, the auditor plans to review state adherence to protocols for general contracts.
State Auditor Doug Hoffer said his team will examine how the state collects taxes, how the judiciary collects payments for court-appointed lawyers, how the state awarded federal education grants and a component of the formula for funding public education.
The office will conduct a special investigation into whether the state follows rules when awarding “sole source” contracts from the Department of Buildings and General Services, the Department for Children and Families, the Department of Vermont Health Access, the Agency of Human Services and the Agency of Education. Sole source contracts are approved by the Agency of Administration, but do not go through a competitive bid process.
The audits will mark the first time a Vermont State Auditor has performed an audit of the Agency of Education or the Vermont Judiciary. Hoffer said his staff needed to diversify its audits across state government.
Hoffer said his office received complaints from whistleblowers about the Agency of Education contract process with nonprofits to distribute $8 million of a $37 million, multi-year grant from the federal Race to the Top program.
The state auditor is also reviewing a component of the state education formula.
“Equalized pupil calculations came up because we haven’t really done anything in the education agency, and we thought that we might spread the joy,” he said. “This equalized pupil calculation looked like a good place to start.”
The so-called equalized pupil calculation is part of the complex formula for how Vermont determines the K-12 education property tax. The number helps the state examine how much schools need to spend per student per school based on weighted factors such as special education and English as a second language. The equalized pupil number is based on a theoretical student count instead of an actual child.
Hoffer said his office will also examine how the state might be able to recover an estimated $175 million that Vermont taxpayers owe in taxes. He said the Tax Department has done “a reasonable job” at collecting taxes, but the amount owed “keeps going up” and his staff might be able to make recommendations about how the department could recover some of the money.
The Judiciary audit will assess how effectively the courts collect money from people who use public defenders but are ordered by a judge to pay for services. Hoffer said there isn’t as much money in that program as his staff might find in the tax receivables audit, but he hopes to find opportunities to increase collections for the state’s Public Defender Special Fund.
The special investigation will deal, in part, with rules adopted by the Agency of Administration in 2006for sole source contracts that exceed $100,000 and do not go through a competitive bid process.
Hoffer said his staff found “sufficient reason” to pursue how the state awards single-source contracts, which he said are approved by the administration but are supposed to be “limited to extraordinary circumstances.”
The audits are scheduled to be released throughout the fiscal year, which runs through June 30.
