From the beginning of the COVID-19 period, I strongly emphasised three phrases to Washington’s governments: “doc,” “doc” and “doc.” Because the state auditor, I knew they’d finally be requested to account for billions of {dollars} in emergency help.
That accounting is going on now and might have actual penalties for native governments discovered of compliance with the necessities hooked up to these federal funds.
Final week I requested federal officers to think about how communications particularly with college districts could have contributed to gaps between the documentation required by the federal authorities and that maintained by colleges. I additionally made solutions for enchancment.
Unprecedented motion was wanted as our nation navigated a historic disaster. Nonetheless, the size, quantity and complexity of federal packages designed to assist have led to points giant and small. Over the previous few weeks, my workplace has engaged with native, state and federal officers on the most recent space of concern: The Emergency Connectivity Fund.
Administered by the Federal Communications Fee, this $7.17 billion program was meant to assist Okay-12 college students and workers throughout the nation who couldn’t in any other case have interaction in distant studying. In Washington, college districts used this system to buy thousands and thousands of {dollars}’ value of computer systems to permit for pupil studying off website.
Sadly, we’ve needed to report noncompliance and query prices associated to this federal program at greater than two dozen college districts so far. Our audits haven’t reported any lack of public funds; quite, the findings usually are associated to a scarcity of documentation exhibiting compliance with federal necessities.
By legislation and coverage, our function is to conduct audits that permit federal companies, together with the FCC, to find out whether or not colleges adopted the necessities of this system. Audits by their nature contain reviewing documentation that demonstrates compliance with these necessities, and plenty of districts didn’t have it.
Faculties of all sizes are understandably involved about these findings, as a result of when auditors query prices in a federal program, the federal authorities can request compensation of some or all these prices. It’s crucial that the FCC think about the complete context of each its program and its steering to colleges when it really works with districts to resolve these quite a few audit findings.
To make sure the FCC has this context, I despatched the company a proper letter detailing the gaps between steering to colleges and directions to auditors. Some examples:
∙ FCC steering to colleges was prolonged — greater than 100 pages — however lacked detailed descriptions of the kind of information colleges ought to keep to doc compliance with necessities.
∙ This program used the identical software construction because the FCC’s long-standing E-Price Program. Nonetheless, the Emergency Connectivity Fund is sort of completely different in its operation and accountability necessities, contributing to misunderstandings about documentation.
∙ A number of college officers famous to us that the FCC gave them vast discretion in estimating what they wanted within the software. They anticipated that comparable flexibility would apply later when describing how they used the computer systems they bought.
When taken along with the weird variety of audit findings, this context suggests college districts believed they had been adequately documenting their work. Nonetheless, it additionally means that the FCC’s communication with college districts was not clear concerning what documentation it could in the end require.
As a former college board member, I perceive that in that very demanding interval, districts had been targeted on doing all they may to fulfill the wants of workers and college students. I additionally know districts satisfaction themselves on being accountable to the general public.
As state auditor, my workplace shares that objective and has all the time labored to supply transparency in the usage of native, state and federal funds. And on this case particularly, I imagine federal companies ought to study the readability — or ambiguity — of the steering they situation when distributing public funds.
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