Audit

The nonpartisan government accountability group Cause of Action has asked the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget to perform a government-wide audit to determine whether agencies are abiding by whistleblower protection laws. The request comes after revelations that employees of the General Services Administration's Pacific Rim region felt threatened by an acting regional administrator for voicing concerns over excessive spending. The region organized a 2010 Las Vegas training conference that cost more than $800,000 and...

WASHINGTON — The White House says White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was first informed about an audit of the IRS' inappropriate targeting of conservative groups on April 24 and that she notified senior staff, including Denis McDonough, the chief of staff to President Barack Obama. White House press secretary Jay Carney says Ruemmler "appropriately" decided not to tell Obama at the time because the audit was ongoing. The audit by a Treasury Department inspector general found that IRS...

An influential regional planning authority in Maryland had an unusually high number of vehicles, and the reasons some employees were allowed to take them home are unclear, according to an audit released Thursday. The Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission failed to secure its gas stations, leaving open the possibility that unauthorized personnel could fill up for free, the audit found. Commission officials initially refused to make the full report available, but changed course late Thursday after they were...

DENVER — Hundreds of Colorado criminals were apparently given erroneous prison sentences, and judges and corrections officials across the state are scrambling to keep them from getting out early — or, in some cases, to return them to the prisons they just left, authorities said Tuesday. Prison officials have alerted courts to 281 inmates whose sentences seem to be incorrect in some way, according to Allison Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections. Judges...

The Defense Department wants to add as many as 1,612 employees to oversee and audit contracts next year even as it plans for a 5 percent cut in the U.S. military's budget. Spending on the workers would rise 14 percent, to $1.9 billion, in fiscal 2013, from $1.7 billion a year earlier, according to the Pentagon's budget request. Staffs at two defense agencies that manage and audit contracts would increase 10 percent, to 17,226, during the same period. The military has been trying to catch up with an audit backlog that...

It is supposed to be an A Team that keeps a close eye on the Defense Logistics Agency , the $41 billion-a-year operation that supplies Meals Ready-to-Eat, uniforms, spare parts and just about everything else to troops around the world. But the agency's accountability office does F-grade work when it comes to conducting audits, according to a recent report by the Pentagon's Inspector General. Many of the audits are improperly performed. Investigators often do not have enough auditing experience and...

Montgomery County's planning director tried to block an investigation of his spending practices and those of his agency, according to a report by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The audit report details instances in which Montgomery Planning Director Rollin Stanley "failed to fully cooperate" with requests for information, delayed auditors' interviews with staff members and provided "misleading and contradictory information. " The report says Stanley lacked "high ethical...

The Federal Housing Administration abruptly delayed the release of a long-awaited independent audit of the financial soundness of the agency, citing potential problems with the accuracy of some of the study's economic models. The audit, compiled by Integrated Financial Engineering of Rockville, was scheduled to be released Wednesday, and the agency's top officials planned to brief reporters on its results. But on Tuesday evening, the agency postponed the event, saying the report had yet to be...

Combine your family dog's name with the name of your old home town and what do you get? In the case of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, you get in trouble with some lawmakers for having a less-than-obvious e-mail handle. At the request of congressional Republicans, the EPA's inspector general has begun auditing how Jackson has used this secondary e-mail account, "Richard Windsor" — named for her dog and the New Jersey township, East Windsor. The inquiry, according...

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown's 2008 reelection campaign failed to account for more than a quarter-million dollars in donations and expenses, and used a now-defunct political consulting firm to pass $239,000 to a firm operated by his brother, according to an audit released Tuesday by the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance. In a blistering critique of his bookkeeping, the audit cited widespread irregularities and discrepancies in how Brown (D) raised and spent money to win a second term...

RICHMOND, Va. — State lawmakers are calling for more financial accountability at Norfolk State University, which has not been able to complete a financial audit for two years. Norfolk State does not have adequate administrative staff or documentation to complete the audits for fiscal years 2011 and 2012, state Auditor Of Public Accounts Martha S. Mavredes told the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission on Monday, The Virginian-Pilot reported Tuesday. Commission members said...

Prince William County's internal audit department was ineffective, its work was incomplete and the department did not abide by its own quality-control guidelines, a peer review of the county's former internal watchdog has found. The department's former acting director, Lawrence Keller, has raised questions, though, about the quality of the peer review, given that the audit department's former members were not given a chance to comment on or respond to the report. He said in an...

We say young singers aren't what they used to be, and then we make huge demands on them. The tenor Matthew Grills was one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2012 — meaning that he made it through several tough rounds and past a number of different judges, including a final round on the Met stage. He was, of course, singing opera arias. On Sunday afternoon, the Washington Performing Arts Society and Vocal Arts D.C. brought him to the Terrace...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is still struggling to adequately monitor its construction program for the poor more than a year after Congress demanded widespread improvements in oversight and accountability, the agency's Office of Inspector General said in an audit this week. Auditors pointed out that HUD has strengthened controls over its HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which was established in 1992 and delivers between $1 billion and $2 billion in...

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates the Dulles Toll Road, failed to collect unpaid tolls and fees from three out of four toll violations cited last year, raising questions about the effectiveness of arrangements made by the authority to track down toll cheats. A company hired to pursue toll violators sent out 95,269 violation notices in 2012, and no payment was made on nearly 71,000. Overall, about 1 million toll violations were tallied last year, but notices were issued on only the...

As the Pentagon vows to become audit ready by 2017, local contractors are finding opportunities in helping the Defense Department clean up its books and implement new processes. Arlington-based Accenture Federal Services has won some of the most recent work, announcing earlier this month new contracts with the Navy totaling more than $30 million to help the service prepare for audits. The measures come as the Pentagon is facing a hard deadline to make its books ready for audit.

NEW YORK -- A $45 million USAID program aimed at improving the ability of Pakistani tribal leaders to govern a politically sensitive stretch of territory along the Afghan border has failed to achieve its primary mission of improving the delivery of basic services, according to an audit by the agency's inspector general. The two-year-old development program for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was designed to help local authorities and private charities provide basic services in one of Pakistan's...

A Pentagon audit has found that the federal government overpaid a billionaire oilman by as much as $200 million on several military contracts worth nearly $2.7 billion. The audit by the Defense Department's inspector general, which was posted on the Pentagon's Web site this week, estimated that the department paid the oilman "$160 [million] to $204 million more for fuel than could be supported by price or cost analysis. " The study also reported that the three contracts were awarded under conditions...

The U.S. government paid $6.8 million for maintenance of more than 7,000 Afghan police vehicles that had been destroyed or were out of commission, according to an inspector general report released Thursday. The report, prepared by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, cast further doubt on Afghanistan's ability to run its nascent security forces after U.S. troops withdraw at the end of 2014. The audit of a $350 million contract awarded to the Dubai-based firm Automotive...