Oversight Of Cash Quickly Becoming A Problem
Americans were promised unparalleled oversight, accountability and transparency of stimulus and financial bailout money.
But that was then.
This week, a different sort of reality became apparent, when inspectors general said they cannot keep up with requirements to keep tabs on tax dollars flowing to financial institutions and stimulus-related projects.
Those efforts in turn have crowded out the search for other kinds of bad financial stuff, such as money laundering, offshore bank operations and such.
The workload is so crushing that auditors have asked Congress to raise the threshold for mandated reviews from $25 million to as high as $500 million, according to a report in CongressDaily, published by GovernmentExecutive.
"Without some tweaking of the threshold, the IGs warned at the hearing, their offices could go from being swamped to sinking deep under water.
"The workload has caused the Treasury Department to nix or defer audits within its terrorist financing and anti-money-laundering units, said Treasury IG Eric Thorson.
His office would like to examine the role of the Office of Thrift Supervision's relationship with insurance giant American International Group, but it simply does not have the resources, Thorson said."
It gets worse. Overseeing the $787 billion stimulus spending is going to be a bear too, it seems. Earl Devaney, the former inspector general at Interior who is now chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said he is going to rely in part citizens to help out with "potentially critical information" on suspected spending abuses.
"'Citizen participation, I hope, will be my force multiplier," he said, according to the story.
By Robert O'Harrow |
May 7, 2009; 2:28 PM ET
Inspectors General
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Posted by: axolotl | May 11, 2009 10:19 AM
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There's only one thing to do to alleviate the workload: for financial audits, contract out the work to reliable, CPA firms that have had to compete for the work. For audits getting at substantive effectiveness and efficiency, go to firms that have no organizational conflicts of interest that cannot be satisfactorily mitigated. One of the best uses of expert contractors is to meet peak workload. There's no reason not to use them now, rather than do nothing or do a lousy job because qualified, repeat qualified, staff are not available in the government. The government has a chronic shortage of people with financial markets and banking knowledge.