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WHITE HOUSE✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Audit into public health contract process sparks outrage from Michigan House Oversight members
Filed 6h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk
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Spy Glass
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
A Michigan Office of the Auditor General report found the state health department awarded the Michigan Public Health Institute nine high-level and 857 project-level agreements totaling $435 million over two years, with insufficient monitoring throughout. Auditors found statements of work supporting only half of nearly $17 million in subcontracted services, about 80% of contracts missing deliverable information, and nearly 70% of financial status reports lacking any underlying cost support.
Two projects worth $10.6 million had no reported project information at all, and over 100 subgrantees receiving $11.8 million went unidentified in department reporting. The department disagreed or partially disagreed with every finding in the audit, even as lawmakers from both parties called the results unbelievable and ridiculous during Tuesday's hearing.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A department can disagree with an audit all it wants, but disagreeing with math is a hard trick to pull off when the number of contracts with no paperwork is the number that got quoted back to them in a public hearing. Calling $10.6 million worth of untracked projects a partial disagreement is the kind of thing that only sounds reasonable inside the building where it happened. If this is what a nearly 40-year partnership looks like on paper, one wonders what the paperwork looked like in year one.
