By JAKE JARVIS
Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Every state agency met a crucial deadline last week for the state to stay on track to complete of a statewide financial audit, possibly signaling the end of financial information trickling in late for years.
About 70 state agencies had to submit a draft of their financial audits to the state on Friday. Even though a handful of colleges raced the clock that day to submit their drafts late in the afternoon, Department of Administration spokeswoman Diane Holley-Brown confirmed that every agency hit Friday’s deadline.
“The Governor is pleased that the agencies got the message that he expects them all to be accountable and that filing of audit documents on time is critical to the operation of state government,” wrote Butch Antolini, the governor’s director of communications, in an email. “While this is just the first step in the audit filing process he has the same expectation when it comes to those agencies meeting future deadlines as well.”
For the past three years, the state submitted its Single Audit late, in part because state agencies turned their draft audits in months late. A Single Audit, which every state in the nation must complete by March 31 after a fiscal year ends, is a financial accounting of all agencies that receive federal money.
Shortly after the Gazette-Mail’s first report on this year’s late submission, Gov. Jim Justice said “heads will roll” because of fiasco. His office has yet to announce any firings or agency shakeups to back up that promise.
“We expect to release information pertaining to the Single Audit investigation in the near future,” Antolini wrote.
Last Friday’s deadline was one of two important early deadlines in the state’s time line to complete its Single Audit on time. Which deadline a state agency must meet depends on which category it falls into.
There are two main kinds of state agencies: ones that are audited by an accounting firm independent of the state, and ones that are not independently audited. Agencies that are independently audited were supposed to meet last week’s deadline.
Independently audited agencies include all the state’s public colleges and universities, the West Virginia Lottery, the Public Employees Insurance Agency and the Economic Development Authority.
Now that all those agencies drafts have been turned in, their next deadline comes in October. Most final drafts are due on Oct. 15, but final audits for higher education are due on Oct. 31. Thirteen agencies had already turned in their final drafts by Friday, according to Holley-Brown.
“The primary reason to have the draft audits submitted early is to allow our staff appropriate time to review the audits to ensure accuracy and completeness,” wrote Holley-Brown in an email. “If there are issues that need addressed, they are done so during this period.”
Agencies that are not independently audited were supposed to send their closing book information to the Department of Administration on July 31, the last day of the fiscal year.
Despite being asked repeatedly, Holley-Brown would not say if every unaudited agency turned their information by the end of July. She would only say that unaudited agencies were “equally responsive” as the audited agencies, and that every closing book form had been received by Friday.
A third type of state agency, which comprised of only four agencies, needed to turn its closing book forms in by last Friday. All four did so on time, according to Holley-Brown.
As fallout to the state’s late submission of the Single Audit, the state’s colleges have suffered sanctions from the U.S. Department of Education which make it difficult to access financial aid dollars for students and to make changes to their academic programs. Officials in higher education hope that, if the state submits its Single Audit on time this year, the federal department will lift those sanctions.
Reach Jake Jarvis at [email protected], Facebook.com/newsroomjake, 304-348-7939 or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.
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