Legislative Joint Auditing-State Agencies

Family do I have a second from representative Watson all in favor accepting the minutes as email to you please A. I. same sign oppose the motion carries we will go to item C. review of reports please refer to your summary and I will hand it over to Mr Boland okay thank you Mr chair today representing one current report has findings and we also have nine reports without finding that a list on page one of the summary. Do you want to follow I need a motion to file the nine reports with no findings I have got from rep resented Wardlaw do I have a second from senator rights all in favor of accepting those ten reports with no findings please say aye same sign opposed those nine reports are then okay the report we have with findings is a highway employment retirement system June thirty two thousand twenty one report and it's got one finding. In a court for the Arkansas code the system reported to us an overpayment of retiree benefits the death of a member that occurred in January two thousand twenty one was not reported to the system and was not discovered until April two thousand twenty two resulting in overpayments totaling over sixty one thousand dollars. That concludes refining Mr are there any questions concerning this let's think issues that we. She is here yes robin Smith if you wanna have have at the end of the table to say anything are you one introduce yourself. Please identify yourself and. Proceed on here testimony. My name is robin Smith Asher's executive secretary do you have anything to add to the agency's responses that you. Right on and thank you got it solved add to that may be allowed. The gentleman who passed away was in a nursing home the way we found out that he had passed away was that the check for March was returned to us. because someone to close the account. We contacted the bank they would tell us to close the account and so we contacted our attorney who then ended up serving papers about the bank in the home it was the son two weeks later after we receive the check he called to tell us is that it died he didn't want us to send anymore mail. Now and I was like well thanks to you know who might have taken the money out of your parents and he said no that he did not have access but bank records indicated that it was he from we have sense actually yesterday a default judgment was filed against him and the lien is should be put on his property as a result of that okay so you feel like you've taken there are required action steps this might be a question first out are there any committee questions first. Chair has questions of staff having been on audit for all the one year that I've been down here the state employees now highway we keep running into this with the retirement that we we overpay when someone dies has that been a target of how do we fix that whether there's a lot of procedures that they go through and robin can attest to this I mean they they search they get downloads from the department of health and they look at the newspapers thank you for a Lotta avenues it's just that sometimes if they're out of state especially they may not get notification this is something the following on a current price the more for a first because the way they paid their benefits they pay their benefits in advance rather than at the end of the month so they they tend to have a few more than the other systems okay. Comment I would also add that we you do have that just because of timing and we pay at the end of the month we generally will contact the family and say you know we've ever paid and most families will send us a check in we also have a death benefit that is paid for retirees and that's helpful for us as well because we can always net against that death benefit it's seventy five hundred dollars so in most cases it's large enough to cover that and so that's why we probably don't have as many plus words okay. the chair will entertain a motion to. Of this issue reviewed any interested in that motion representative Bentley it sure looks for a second. Senator second all in favor of. The motion please say aye same side opposed. Thank you thank you appreciate your testimony members ID think I need to tell you we have nothing further on the agenda and our next meeting is October thirteenth so with that. We are adjourned.