First, the only audits completed were of 3 Catholic schools in the Virgin Islands, and it looks like they're going to get back something like $500,000 total. I have two problems with it.
1) OK, the schools did a bad thing back in the year 2000 (it looks like maybe they tried the old bill-the-SLD-90%-and-never-pay-the-rest scheme), but the each school has between 92 and 250 students, so a fine of $130,000 is likely to be the end of those schools. Meanwhile, the gain to the program is only $500,000 (minus the cost of the audit), if they are able to take it out of the hide of the little schools.
2) Virgin Islands. Hmmm.... Why not investigate a school in, say, Maryland?
The second thing thing that interested me was the list of ongoing audits. A few observations (please note, I just did quick counts, so I could be off on some of the numbers):
106 audits by my count, 101 being done by KPMG.
Here are the top 10 states in population, listed in milliions, along with the number of audits:
| State | Population (millions) | Audits |
| CA | 34 | 17 |
| TX | 21 | 19 |
| NY | 19 | 5 |
| FL | 16 | 6 |
| IL | 12 | 1 |
| PA | 12 | 0 |
| OH | 11 | 2 |
| MI | 10 | 2 |
| NJ | 8 | 2 |
| GA | 8 | 2 |
| NC | 8 | 0 |
| VA | 7 | 2 |
Meanwhile, South Carolina, with 4 million people, has 5 audits. I don't want to draw any conclusions, since it's not a very complete sample. But I were a district in TX not currently getting audited, I'd count my lucky stars.
I'd like a little more info on each investigation: When was the investigation started? What funding year is under investigation? How much funding is under investigation? What I'd really like to know is why each investigation was started.
The FCC floated the idea of requiring regular audits for the largest applicants, and the large applicants were understandably cool to the idea. But they're already on the list: NYC, LA, New Orleans, Detroit, Boston to name the first that struck my eye. I'm glad to see that they're not only going after small schools on tropical islands.
KPMG was engaged by USAC to conduct performance audits for funding years 2002 and 2003 funding years.
ReplyDeleteLooking at schools located on outside the continental U.S. is completely necessary. We all know what happened in Puerto Rico.
ReplyDeleteAccording to this appeal, those Catholic schools were actually duped by a service provider who took the money and ran.
ReplyDelete