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Auditor Doug Hoffer: 2023 Year in Review

Submitted by tim on

by Doug Hoffer, Vermont Auditor of Accounts As 2023 draws to an end, I want to take stock of the work my office has done over the course of the year.
 
The mission of the office is to hold State government accountable by making sure programs are working effectively and that State government is operating efficiently. I’m happy to provide this brief summary of our efforts this year on your behalf.

  • Our audit of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living’s system of inspecting Vermont’s 114 assisted living and residential care homes found that facilities were not being inspected annually as required by law. Some hadn’t been inspected since 2018.  Also, when DAIL found problems that could cause injury or death, they did revisit the facilities to verify that the problems were corrected, but it took them between 54 and 125 days to do so. For the next most severe deficiencies, DAIL did not follow up at all more than half the time and took between 35 and 148 days to go back when they did. Vermont elders deserve better.

DAIL's system of inspecting Vermont’s 114 assisted living and residential care homes found that facilities were not being inspected annually as required by law.

  • Our audit of the Agency of Digital Service’s management of six large IT projects found that three of the six had significant cost increases (at least 100%) and four had significant schedule delays (at least one year) caused by a variety of factors.  One project—the Secretary of State Business Portal and Filing project (not shown in the graph) —has failed to produce a usable system. The project was supposed to be completed in December 2020 at a cost of $2.17 million.  As of December 31, 2022, the State had spent $2.42 million on the project, including paying a contractor $2 million, yet no part of the project had been deployed.

Agency of Digital Service’s management of six large IT projects found that three of the six had significant cost increases (at least 100%) and four had significant schedule delays.

  • We issued a report to the Vermont Community Broadband Board and to the Legislature outlining a series of risks Vermont will need to overcome in order to successfully deploy broadband to every home and business.
  • We recommended that the Treasurer’s Office utilize its authority under state law to proactively return unclaimed cash to the Vermonters it belongs to. The Treasurer has since initiated a pilot program that safely returns Vermonters’ money without the need to submit notarized forms.
  • We completed three audits of municipal tax increment financing districts (TIF), including the Burlington Waterfront. We found that Burlington had made a slew of administrative and accounting errors and owed the state’s Education Fund nearly $200,000. Otherwise, taxpayers in other communities would have paid for Burlington’s mistakes.
  • We issued ten audits of county sheriff departments, raising numerous issues which helped inform the Legislature’s sheriff reform legislation.
  • Our investigative report about the Dental Therapy Program at Vermont Technical College found that seven years after the initial law was passed and after more than $2.6 million spent, Vermont does not have a dental therapy program, and thus has not enrolled a single student. According to an updated timeline provided by VTC, the best-case scenario is that the first class of dental therapy students will not enroll until 2027, more than a decade after the law passed.
  • Our audits of the Public Utility Commission and the Agency of Transportation’s paving division made recommendations to improve their performance measurement in order to help them deliver better results and be more accountable to taxpayers.

When a State employee uses (often without knowing it) a more expensive provider, it increases the overall cost of health care for the State, which is mostly paid for by taxpayers.

  • Just last week, we encouraged the Legislature, the Scott Administration, and education officials to consider implementing a strategy that could save many millions on teacher health care costs. In the face of potentially significant education property tax increases, every effort should be made to reduce unnecessary costs before doing anything that would hurt teachers and students. Our analysis found the same strategy could save more than $16 million each year for the state employee health plan which would relieve pressure on the State’s general fund budget.

In the coming months we’ll be releasing additional audits and reports covering a range of topics – making sure efforts to grow the nursing workforce are well-designed, emergency preparedness, EB-5, due diligence around COVID business grants, and more. 
 
I wish you a happy 2024.