Legislative Joint Auditing-State Agencies
Video
Transcript
1 document
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin RTX5060
- Processing date
- October 7, 2026
Speaker 1
0:00
contains eight findings. This report was deferred from our December meeting since the director did not attend. The day after that meeting, the director resigned, effective December 13, 2019. Also, per the committee's request, we looked into the options of including this agency in the budget
Speaker 2
0:14
hearings of the fiscal sessions, which starts in March. Per the published parameters for the fiscal session, the Joint Budget Committee will hold budget hearings for the Department of Human Services, Department of Health, Department of Corrections, Department of Public Safety, the Institutions of Higher Education, the Department of Education, and
any additional agencies that may be referred by the Arkansas Legislative Council or Joint Budget Committee. Therefore, it appears that there is a way to include this agency in those budget hearings if the legislature thought that was necessary. Also, we were unable to get responses to our findings from the previous director. However, the Department of Labor and Licensing has responded to the findings since our December meeting, and you should have
Speaker 1
0:52
a copy of those responses in your packets. They'll be separate from the actual report. It should be a separate attachment. You should have those
as well. Thank you, Tom. Members, since we went through the findings last time,
I think it would be, for time purposes, not read through there
again unless there's an objection. Doesn't appear to be. If that were the people from the architecture landscape, interior design, people come forward who would like to give testimony, please. Thank you, sir. Can
you please say your name and your title for
Speaker 11
1:31
the record? Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee.
I'm Daryl Bassett. I'm Secretary of Labor and Licensing. Thank you, sir. Do you have any comments before we get to questions? First of all, I just want to certainly apologize to the chairman, co-chairman, members of the committee, and also members of the auditing committee for our failure to timely respond to these audit findings previously. We certainly concur with these findings. You have in front of you our responses, which should serve as assurance that we are on top of this
and don't expect this to happen again. I'll take
Speaker 13
2:17
questions, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Daryl. So it's
my understanding that the person who didn't respond to these questions resigned the day after our last meeting and that since that transformation process is coming to your department, and I do see you have responded to our questions since last meeting. Is that correct?
That's correct, sir. All right, thank you, sir. Questions for the committee? Seeing
none, I will – Senator Hickey, you have a question?
Speaker 16
2:44
I just – I'll be honest, I'm just now kind of reading his response. Yeah, we'll take a
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
3:08
minute or two to let people read through the response. It's appropriate now,
Senator Hickey, whenever you're ready. Thank you. Mr. Bessette, I want to commend you for the way you handled that because we did have a lot of questions last time.
why the gentleman was not here, and I'm glad that that all worked itself out. However, have you looked at these payments that were made on this credit card statement? I believe some of them didn't have adequate receipts and everything. Are we 100% sure that those were used
for the correct thing and that nothing else was transpiring there? Have we delved into that any?
Speaker 11
3:41
We are in the process of doing that, sir. As we have, as you, as indicated in my response, my CFO has taken control of the financial
operations of that agency, and we've looked into those 13 credit card statements. I'm sure you're referring to the 31,000 that did not have evidence of approval before. They are, they were legitimate expenditures. They just didn't have backup documentation as the internal controls would dictate. But, yes, sir, we have satisfied ourselves that at least those particular findings are good. We are continuing, I want to emphasize, Senator, further investigations of all of the P-Card expenditures
to ascertain whether or not they were appropriate. We don't have a final assessment of that at this point. Okay. And hopefully you
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
4:31
won't find anything that's not appropriate, but in the event that you do, you will
proceed through the appropriate channels to make sure that we follow through with anything like that? Yes, sir. Because I know you won't be coming back to us as long as we file this report today. But you all are going to basically do a
Speaker 11
4:51
complete audit of all that? Yes, sir. We certainly are, and we'll maintain constant cooperation with legislative audit
to assure that we are safeguarding these funds appropriately. Okay. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you. Thank you. Any
further questions for the committee? Seeing none, I'll accept a motion to file this report. We have a motion, we have a second. A second, all in favor say
Speaker 18
5:15
aye. Aye. All opposed, the motion is filed. Thank you so much, Daryl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Members of
the committee, we're gonna go a little bit out of order. We have a reason we're doing this. Next on the agenda, I think it's the AETN, but
we're gonna skip to the Arkansas State Crime Lab, which should be on page six of eight of your packet, page six of
Speaker 2
5:37
eight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the chairman said, we're going to talk about the state crime lab report now. This is a June 30, 2018 report, and it contains two findings. The first finding, procurement ethics prescribed in Arkansas law establishes standards all employees should follow when it's spending public funds. Arkansas code requires an employee to disclose any benefit from any state contract with a business in which the employee has a financial interest. The agency's assistant director, who previously served as a scientific operations director,
and her spouse, who's a former branch chief at the Arkansas Department of Health, were among the founding partners of Pinpoint Testing, LLC, in 2013 and are both partial owners of the company, which is currently located in the Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute. The company utilized resources from the University of Arkansas for medical sciences bioventures to develop the Toxbox, a toxicology testing product, which is the company's sole product. The agency's assistant director did not properly disclose her individual relationship with the company on the form required until May 2019, at which
time she disclosed a 12% ownership interest. It should be noted that the assistant director's spouse reported on a 2016 form that he was CEO of the company and the assistant director had a 20% ownership interest in the company. The agency expended approximately $31,000 and $82,000 with two different vendors for the product during the period March 22, 2017 through March 15, 2019. The second finding, a data analytics review of purchasing card transactions, revealed the following undocumented disbursements, totaling approximately $1,700 that were not for an agency purpose, $1,100 for wireless services, $300 for utilities, $162 for fuel and parking, a little over $100 for school lunches, and $18 for groceries.
Discussions with agency staff indicated that the procurement manager made the purchases and recorded the charges in the agency's online banking system for review by management. In several instances, the purchases were classified incorrectly, which concealed the nature of the purchases. The procurement manager resigned from employment on December 31, 2017, and both of these findings for the crime lab were
Speaker 34
7:41
referred to the prosecuting attorney. That concludes our findings for the crime lab. Thank you. Can we have
the representatives from the Arkansas State Crime Lab please come forward? When you can, please
Speaker 38
7:59
say your name and your title for the record, please.
Speaker 40
8:02
Kermit Channel, Agency Director. John Smith, CFO for Public Safety. CFO for what?
Excuse me. Department of Public Safety. Do you have any savings before we get to questions? No, sir, I don't. Okay, committee, do we have any questions? Let me start it off.
Speaker 13
8:27
So the assistant director had a stake in this company, 12%, I believe,
and then her husband had a 20% stake in this company, and that was, per the audit, not found or not disclosed to the normal disclosure process. How much information was known about that company and her relationship with it And did that influence or have any kind of bearing on the contracts that was done that obviously benefit that
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
8:57
company through the crime lab? No, it did not. It was
Speaker 38
9:02
known. It was known to me for a long time about my assistant director's role in the company.
As a matter of fact, she came to me early on to make sure that it was understood by me. So I was totally aware of that. So originally, when the 9804 was filed by her husband, I made the incorrect assumption that that was the filing necessary since it did list her. So then, of course, when we refiled that again, then my assistant director made the forms appropriate. We notified DF&A to make sure there was full transparency. And to your question, too, Mr. Chair, is that there was no influence in any contracts.
Okay, I might have more, but Representative
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
9:49
Love, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to, I guess I wanted to understand. Now, was there not a statement of financial interest
Speaker 45
10:01
bound for this employee that had the ownership in the
Speaker 5
10:06
company? There wasn't one on file with the agency until May of 2019. It was filed by the assistant director.
Her husband had filed one with his employer about that relationship. Let me ask you,
Speaker 48
10:20
did you talk to the employee or did you talk to the employee? Yes,
Speaker 45
10:25
sir, we did. Did it appear that they had an understanding that they possibly should have filed a statement of financial interest? I think once we brought it to their attention, I
Speaker 1
10:37
think they understood that they should have filed, she should have filed that herself with the agency, yes.
Speaker 45
10:44
Okay. So nothing malicious about this. I mean, I'm just trying to get an understanding. It didn't seem like she was trying, he or she was trying to evade the law by not disclosing just. I couldn't comment on that. All I can say
Speaker 1
11:00
is that the proper disclosures were not made originally, but they were done later on. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 18
11:09
Senator Dismane, then we'll go to Representative Evans. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
11:12
And I guess really my question is for staff as far as,
so what we found was a disclosure error. Is that right? But actually, did we find it or did they not disclose for one year, figured out they should disclose, then disclose, and so the finding is on the prior nondisclosure? What transpired to kind of get us to this point, and then what is the outcome going to be? I mean does this prohibit that relationship from there's nothing that prohibits the relationship from existing this is just a filing issue that's my understanding it's not
Speaker 1
11:43
not necessarily illegal for there to be that but if you have a company that's doing business with the state and you're
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
11:49
an employee you have to disclose that okay and so when we've we referred it to the PA so that's going to be for the PA to determine if they're going to press charges for
Speaker 62
12:01
not filing right not But not the relationship itself, so much as just not filing. Yes, that would be up to the prosecutor. Plus, the second finding also went to the prosecutor because
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
12:10
of the credit card thing. I see that one different. Okay. Representative, if you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the agency, in regard to finding number two, you noted that the procurement manager had resigned her position prior to any identification of the misuse.
Was there a time frame in that as far as when did she resign before this was found? Let me
Speaker 65
12:32
see. I'm not sure exactly. I wanted to say 2017. Was there when she resigned? She resigned in December
Speaker 40
12:37
of 2017, and we did not find this until. Until actually audit. Right,
Speaker 67
12:42
until actually audit. We started in, I'm going to say, April of 19.
So well over a year and a half. Okay. Thank you. I believe we had Senator Hickey and Senator Stubblefield.
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
12:56
Right. Mine was also with finding two, and this is more for staff. But we said that these were not for agency purposes. Were these being used for personal? Is that what we're saying with this? That's what it appears, yes. They were paying personal utility bills and things with that. That's what it appears. And for you all, unless I misunderstood, were you not in agreement with that? I heard you talk about the contractual things, that there wasn't any influence there. But back to this finding, too.
what do you feel has transpired with that? Yeah, I believe, yes, and I agree with the audit findings on that. We
Speaker 38
13:34
did not have an adequate system in place, and while we were undergoing the audit, we did put preventative policy and procedure in there, so this does not happen again. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. One note before I move on, Senator
Hickey, the reason we went out of order is because this employee here is working at a state agency, and we'll have them in a minute to discuss that. So we'll discuss that when we get to AETN.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
13:57
Who's next? I think Senator Semperfield is next. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is this pinpoint testing, are they the only company that produces this
Speaker 66
14:07
particular product? Yes, sir. That's the only company. They're the only one in the country? Yes, sir. That is
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
14:11
true. You take bids on these contracts? Yes, sir. Okay. That's all I want to
know? Thank you, Senator. Representative Love, did you have a question? I believe
Speaker 74
14:20
you did. No, no. He answered it. I just wanted to know if they had any controls in place, but he implemented it. so I'm
Chair
Unverified
14:25
fine. Thank you. Yes, sir. Representative, if you recognize.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
14:29
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Have we recovered any of this money or are we in the process of recovering any of the money? That's out of my
Speaker 38
14:37
scope. I'm not sure who would be making that recovery of the funding. So to my knowledge, no. Okay. Thank you. I think. Any more
questions, committee, on these two findings? Any more questions? Yes, sir, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 80
14:59
Are these, these are two different people for findings one and two, or are these the same? They are two distinct, different people. Okay,
okay, thank you. Any more questions? Seeing none, I will accept a motion to file this report. We have a motion, we have a second. We have a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? This report is filed.
Speaker 2
15:25
Thank you, sirs. Tom, whenever you're ready. Okay. Our next report is the Arkansas Education Television Commission June 30-19 report.
Speaker 1
15:31
This report contains one finding. The agency received a grant from the Arkansas Department of Education for $2.8 million for fiscal year 2019 to fund the Internet Deliberate Education for Arkansas Schools, or IDEAS, program for teacher professional development and educational resources. The Department of Education performed a review of agency program disbursements and noted costs considered unrelated to the IDEAS program totaling a little over $400,000. for which the Department of Education recommended refund or recruitment from the subsequent year's grant. The AEC recorded liability payable to the Department of Education
at June 30, 2019, fiscal year end. That concludes our finding for AETN. Thank you.
Any representatives from AETN, please come in forward. Please state your name and title for the record, please. Courtney
Speaker 83
16:24
Pledger, Agency Director. Fred Weedore, CFO. Marty
Speaker 84
16:27
Ryle, Director of External Affairs. Thank you. Do you all have any
statements before we move on to questions?
Speaker 87
16:37
You have received our responses. We have been working closely with the Department of Education to make certain that we absolutely understand the guidelines moving forward. Uh, we've, we've, uh, assigned a senior level, uh, role, uh, to, uh, interact directly with ADE on every, uh,
Speaker 83
16:58
every single detail of, of this grant. Thank you, ma'am. Um, going to
questions, this is kind of one of unlucky, unlucky situations for y'all where
another finding kind of goes into what y'all are here and, you know, we have the table. So it's my understanding that the prior crime state employee who, from the audit, had
roughly $1,700 used of state money for personal reasoning is now working for AETN. Are you aware of
that or know anything about it? We're not
Speaker 70
17:37
aware of that. Tom, can you please speak on that further?
Do you want the name of
the employee? No, we probably shouldn't do that in this public record. You're probably correct on that. But what I am saying is correct. The employee from the prior finding is
Speaker 1
17:58
now working at AETN. It's our understanding that they went to work for AETN in January of
Speaker 89
18:08
18 as a procurement coordinator. Well, that's about when we hired a new procurement coordinator.
Speaker 37
18:16
we have no knowledge of this. I will share
Speaker 1
18:18
with the committee, too. I mean, based on some work that we did this morning checking on this, is that that employee, ATN, currently does not have a credit card, has no responsibilities over credit card transactions or anything like that. That's what we learned this morning. That is correct. But, see,
I think this is a problem. We have a lot of these meetings, and we have employees who act either negligently or intentionally broke the law,
especially when it comes to money, and then they seem to find other jobs in different state government, and I think it's a problem we've seen over and over again. So we'll go to questions here in a minute, but I think that employees should be looked at very carefully, especially with
this being referred to the prosecuting attorney, and you probably already know the name. We'll make sure if staff gives you that person's name after
Speaker 98
19:06
this meeting. Absolutely. Thank you. Any questions from the
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
19:08
committee? Senator Hickey? yes back to uh to the findings that you all had
this uh on this grant right here it said that there
was funds that they had found that was unrelated to the grant of 409 thousand dollars and i guess that you all agreed that they were not related i guess first of all i'd like to know what some of those were because that's a large amount and then i see that you actually
you know put on a liability you may have put a liability on as far as on your balance sheet but have you set up a
Speaker 89
19:45
payment plan to pay them back and if so what what is that the Department of Education has chosen to reduce our current year grant funding by the amount of this this finding
Um, the bulk of the dollar amount of the finding was, uh, personnel related to employees that the Department of Education felt were not directly, uh, working toward the creation of teacher professional development. Um, that, that's, that's the bulk of, of, of the dollar amount. The rest was some communication charges and things of that nature
that they felt were not directly related to the production of teacher professional development. We felt that they were related, that this weren't directly part of the making of
Speaker 86
20:46
professional development. That's what I was going to add. They were all expenditures that related to education and the things we do for education, just they weren't specifically for teacher professional development.
Speaker 87
21:02
We have been receiving this grant since 2006. So for 13 years, we've been following a set of guidelines that we understood to be the guidelines. now that we have been notified that those guidelines need to change, that they are different, we will be following them to the T. We already are. Follow-up? Yes, sir. Just,
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
21:28
I guess, help me a little here. I mean, in your finding here, or in your response,
you said that you recorded a liability payable. But the truth of the matter is, I mean, are you also recording something called a grant receivable on the asset side? Because I don't understand if you're just not going to take the future grant, why you would
Speaker 89
21:55
have recorded it as a liability payable. We were required to make that entry as part of the comprehensive annual financial report for the state because of the dollar amount.
So what will happen is in fiscal year 19, that liability will be removed, but the other side of the entry is going to be grant revenue. We're not really getting it, but we're going to record it as revenue. Okay, and I think that's, if you're doing it that
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
22:28
way, I guess that's okay, even though it seems like an odd way
to do it to me, to be honest.
I would have thought that you would have just footnoted something in there. But as long as you have a grant receivable and you're just going to reduce it so that you've got that offsetting debit and credit, I guess that works. So that will explain that. That's how we'll do it, sir. Thank
you. Any more questions, committee? Seeing none, I accept a motion to file this report. We've got a motion. We have a second. We have a second. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, this report has been filed. Thank you, Tom. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 1
23:11
Our next report on the agenda is the Southwest Arkansas Counseling and Mental Health Center June 30-19 report, which contains two findings. This mental health center was not audited by a legislative audit but by a private CPA firm. The first finding, during the year the center's billing accounts receivable subletters structure changed significantly. The reserves for uncollectible accounts are not being analyzed periodically, and the Center continued to use the old methodology of calculating the reserves for uncollectible accounts when the structure of the internal accounts receivable function had changed.
The accounts receivable reserves and bad debt expense were overstated as of June 30, 2019 by approximately $300,000. In the second finding, internal controls should be established and implemented to ensure that accrued payroll items are properly reflected in the accounting records of the Center. Accrued paid time off was understated by approximately $174,000 and vacation expense by a similar amount. That concludes our findings for the Southwest Arkansas Mental Health Center. Thank you. Do
we have some representatives from the Southwest Arkansas Council Mental Health Center to come forward, please?
Speaker 111
24:22
Please say your name and your title for the record. Danny Stanley. I'm the Executive Director of Southwest Arkansas Counseling and
Speaker 112
24:31
Mental Health Center. I'm Rebecca Harris, the CFO. Sorry. Rebecca Harris, the CFO. Do you have a statement
before we get to questions? No. Any questions committees on these
two findings? Seeing none, I will accept a motion to file this report.
We've got a motion. Do we have a second? All in favor say aye. Any opposed?
This report has been filed. Thank you all for coming all this
Speaker 2
25:12
way up here. Thank you. Our next report is the Arkansas. Oh, sorry. Let me skip on. I just got to skip over that one. Okay.
Speaker 1
25:18
Sorry about that. Our next report is the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, June 30, 2018 report. This report contains one finding. During our testing of vehicle logs, we noticed that all employees were not recording documentation
required by the Department of Finance Administration Fleet Management Guide. Specifically, two employees did not record time in and time out for their vehicles as required by the manual. The noncompliance occurred after all employees using agency vehicles were given additional training due to a prior year finding concerning the same issue. I'm sure that concludes our finding for natural resources. Thank you, Tom. Can somebody from
the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission please come forward? please say your name and title for
Speaker 54
25:58
the record i'm bruce holland i'm the executive director
Speaker 116
26:03
of the arkansas natural resource commission division of the department of agriculture cynthia bearded accounting operations manager for the
Speaker 118
26:09
division of natural resources any statement about this finding before we move on uh just that there
Speaker 116
26:16
was uh when the problem was found it was corrected immediately it looked like the
employee didn't quite understand how it worked that's correct okay any questions committee sir you're recognized thank you mr chair
Speaker 120
26:27
the employee how long had the employee been with
Speaker 122
26:31
you guys uh 15 years for one of them the other one
Speaker 123
26:35
about two years okay so it followed so the findings were found the year before as well for similar situations right with not clocking in and out and capturing the mileage did i not read that correctly i'll let cynthia
Speaker 118
26:54
help me out here um the vehicles are permanently assigned to these employees they travel multiple places in a single day and they honestly didn't have room on the forms record every place they were going so they just decided that they would take those two columns
off they were putting in the correct odometer starting and finished odometer and as soon as this was brought to our attention we modified the form we talked to the two employees and now that we're under the department of ag we have a sole employee that's dedicated to just reviewing vehicle logs for the entire department and so this has been taken care of and we don't anticipate coming back for this again so you guys didn't know that they were keeping those two
Speaker 123
27:31
columns off until the audit? Correct, correct. Representative, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just curious,
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
27:46
are these take-home vehicles, are they assigned to them? Were they actually drive them to their place of abode or residence? Yes. Okay. All right. No further. Thank you. Any more questions, committee, on
this finding? Seeing none, I'll accept a motion to file this report. I have a motion. Do we have a second? All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? The report is fired. Thank you so much. Thank you. Last one. Our
Speaker 2
28:15
last report on the agenda today is the Arkansas State Board of Nursing June 30-18 report,
Speaker 1
28:20
which also contains one finding. Arkansas code allows for payment of accumulated unused sick leave not to exceed $7,500. Review of all employee lump sum payouts at the agency revealed that one employee received a sick leave payout of $7,500 but was only entitled to about $3,900. The agency appears to have submitted proper relief payout documentation. However, a clerical error at the Department of Finance Administration, Office of Personnel Management, calls an overpayment of almost $3,600. That concludes the finding. Thank you. Do we have
somebody from the Arkansas State Board of Nursing?
Speaker 135
28:52
Last one left. Yes, sir. Okay, so before the person
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
29:02
sits down, I'm trying to understand, if this is a clerical error on DF&A's part, why is the Board of Nursing, I guess we need to ask Mr. Lothian, because, I mean, if it's DF&A's clerical error, we need to be finding out what DF&A is doing to make sure that they don't have any clerical errors like this.
And then, I guess, secondly, also, I will ask her a question about repayment of the money. Okay, let her say her title.
I think Tom has a question or has a statement, and we can get her title and thank you for the record. Go ahead, Tom.
Speaker 2
29:39
So, Representative, the way it works, since they're a small board like that, they're what's called a
Speaker 1
29:44
service bureau agency, so they don't actually cut the warrants themselves. They send it over to the service bureau, which is part of DFA, to do that. Okay. And somewhere they send over the paperwork, and somewhere in that process is where the cleric error occurred.
But here, the overpayment happened on their set of books, so that's why it's reported here. Ma'am, can
you please say your name and title for
Speaker 139
30:06
the record? I'm Darla Erickson, the Administrative Services Manager at the Arkansas State Board of Nursing. Have any statement
before we get started? No, sir. Yeah. So as we've kind of explained it, it seems like y'all did the right thing and sent the information over and that the employee received this overpayment and that it seemed to be a DF&A problem that you all try to correct.
And my understanding is the employment is now on a payment plan to pay back the access money. Yes, sir. Is that correct?
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
30:39
That's correct. Okay, good. Representative Love? That's it. Senator Hickey? Yeah. Just, of course, this is, I guess, back from June 30th of 18, so there's been quite a bit of time that's transpired. How much has the employee paid? Have they been paying on time, and where are we at
Speaker 139
30:54
with that? Is it transpiring, as we said? She has come into an agreement with us, which the F&A gave us the form to forward.
So she's agreed to pay $50 a month until it's paid in full and has been doing so for the past four months, and it is timely. She's making timely payments. Thank you. Yeah, you hate that.
I mean, it's an overpayment. It's by the book, but, you know, we appreciate her doing that. Speaker Shepard.
Representative Matthew J. Shepherd
Unverified
31:21
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a question for staff. Was the check actually issued directly to the employee, or did it go through the agency? It
Chair
Unverified
31:29
goes directly to the employee, is my understanding.
Speaker 148
31:32
Okay. Yeah, thank you. Representative, you're recognized. I have a question. I
Speaker 119
31:42
know how much time I have with the county, how much I've accrued. So I was wondering, do the state agency employees know how much time they have? So if an overpayment is made, I mean, I know if you've paid me out more money than
Speaker 139
31:57
what I have accrued. If I made this, her particular payment was made directly into the Arkansas Diamond Plan for her,
so she didn't get cash in her hands, so to speak, to notice a big check. Oh, it went straight to her contributions. Okay, thank you. yeah just just one more
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
32:14
a little bit of conversation going on here that not just me and i and i know we have to have a finding under somebody's name but do we have do we have this as a correctly under them or should the findings or should we have had the finding under dfna
i mean because i'll be honest i don't really know how they could have even kept this
Speaker 1
32:40
from From our perspective, when we're auditing DFA, we won't see this payment because it's under the nursing board's appropriation. That's why in here you see we referenced DFA because we wanted you all to know that the AC did what they were supposed to do, and
Speaker 157
32:57
over there. Right. Okay. Well, again, I know we've got a finding for them, but it's almost like a no-fault type of thing.
Yeah, it's an interesting thing that an employee now has to pay money back, and it sounds like she didn't even know there was a problem. y'all did nothing wrong and dfna isn't the one that got the hammer of the audit so any
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
33:18
other questions yes sir representative love i have a couple of questions uh number one so so how how does and i guess this is a question we need to ask dfna how do they come to the agreement that they just pay back 50 a month for i guess until the debt is resolved because i mean and
Then number two is if the money went to the diamond plan, how could we not recoup that money if we paid it into the diamond plan? I mean, did she cash out or did she? My understanding
Speaker 139
33:48
is this probably would trigger some sort of tax event for her if she pulled it out of the diamond plan. So
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
33:57
then we should be able to go into the diamond plan and recoup that money if we paid it into the diamond plan. I mean, that's something that really needs to be looked at, too, because if we put $7,500 there, we owe the $3,900, and we played it into a state plan, we should be able to go in and recoup that money.
We should, I mean, there shouldn't be a $50 repayment. We should be able to go and recoup that money. It would be different if we gave her a check.
Speaker 1
34:26
Yeah, Representative, I'm not sure how they came up with the $50 repayment plan, but I do know enough about Diamond Deferred that Diamond Deferred is actually the employee's money. They choose to put money in there. It's really kind of separate from the state. I don't know that we would have any authority to go in there and suck that money back out of Diamond Deferred because that's directed by the employees individually.
Of course, Paul, I'm looking at you. You could
Speaker 160
34:52
correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't. I understand this is the first I've heard of this, but at the end of the day, we should have called, but the payment to her, I don't think we can
Speaker 162
35:18
do anything with that other than ask for repayment. she's put it into the tax I guess
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
35:26
I'm just I'm kind of perplexed by the fact that we could put I mean I can understand if she cashed the check and she didn't have the money but we put it into a plan where it's where it's gaining money gaining interest. I'm surprised we can't go back in and actually reverse that transaction. I'm kind of having problems
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
35:56
And I think I heard Mr. Lothian say he was going to look into it and get back with it. I kind of agree with Mr. Love
as far as the principle of this thing because on this particular thing And I'm not going to say $3,700 is not a lot of money, but what if we ever did run into a case where we had $30,000 or $40,000 or some type of clerical error like that that was of a larger nature? If
we don't have something in place, maybe possibly we should look at trying to develop some legislation to take care of that because in the end,
even though somebody makes a clerical error it's just like the bank
or something like that if they were to make a clerical error if it's not if it's not your money you're liable for the thing again this lady here if if she's paying and she's paying timely and it's not a lot but i think it may be a good lesson for us to get ahead of the curve as representative loves talking about so that uh in the in the future if we were to have this same issue on a larger amount we'd have an avenue to proceed so thank you sir
any more questions committee seeing none i will accept
a motion to file this report we have a motion we have a second all in favor say aye all those any opposed thank you
and with that the next meeting will be february 27 2020 i think it's a little bit different because of the fiscal sessions coming up with that we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to order by Chairman.
C. Review of reports. (Refer to the Summary)
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — LEGISLATIVE JOINT AUDITING - STATE AGENCIES, Jan 23, 2020 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 1
Speaker 2
Senator Trent Garner Chair
Unverified
Speaker 11
Speaker 13
Speaker 16
Senator Jimmy Hickey, Jr
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 34
Speaker 38
Speaker 40
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 45
Speaker 5
Speaker 48
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
Speaker 62
Representative Brian S. Evans
Unverified
Speaker 65
Speaker 67
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
Speaker 66
Speaker 74
Chair
Unverified
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Speaker 80
Speaker 83
Speaker 84
Speaker 87
Speaker 70
Speaker 89
Speaker 81
Speaker 37
Speaker 98
Speaker 86
Speaker 111
Speaker 112
Speaker 54
Speaker 116
Speaker 118
Speaker 120
Speaker 122
Speaker 123
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Speaker 135
Speaker 139
Representative Matthew J. Shepherd
Unverified
Speaker 148
Speaker 119
Speaker 96
Speaker 157
Speaker 160
Speaker 162
Speaker 143