An initiative designed to identify duplicate payments the state made and recoup taxpayer dollars has identified more than $1 million in redundant payments made during the past 16 months.
So far, the state has recovered $950,027 and is working to recoup an additional $58,849. A total of 27 different agencies, boards and commissions made 107 duplicate payments between January 2019 and May 2020, the analysis found.
In November, the state announced a partnership between the Office of Budget and Management (OBM) and InnovateOhio “to identify duplicate payments in the state government accounting system.” Officials say the advanced analytics tools allow the state to detect “subtle duplications that escape human review.”
Pete LuPiba, communications director for the OMB, told The Center Square: “The analytics tool produces results of potential duplicates, which directs the attention of the staff at OBM to investigate the flag to see if it is indeed a duplicate, or simply a situation where more than one invoice needed to be paid.”
LuPiba continued: “We are now performing these reviews in near real-time, which has allowed us to, in several instances, stop a duplicate payment before it is even issued.”
He added: “It is possible to go back further than 2019, but the ability to recover older payments becomes much more difficult and time-consuming from an investigatory and recovery standpoint, which would remove staff resources from the work they do to prevent future cases and recover funds from duplications that do slip through.”
The OBM review does not include so-called “subsidy payments,” such as those made through entities like the Department of Medicaid. Officials say those are mostly governed through managed care contracts, which place the risk on third-party vendors.
“When we created InnovateOhio, one of my goals was to elevate technology inside state government to make it more productive and more customer-service friendly,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said in a news release. “This is a meaningful example of how we are changing state government for the better.”
State officials say recouping money is more urgent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a memo last week, OBM Director Kimberly Murnieks noted the state’s tax revenues lag, and the COVID-19 pandemic’s aftermath could “have enduring negative consequences” through the 2021 fiscal year.
“Now more than ever, as we work to restart our economy and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we must be good stewards of Ohio taxpayer dollars,” Murnieks said in a statement.
“The benefit to state taxpayers is not limited to the duplicate payments we catch,” Murnieks added. “Each confirmed duplicate leads to process reviews that help prevent future errors. When we identify a process flaw, we then work to eliminate it completely. This is a new level of continuous improvement in state budgeting that didn’t exist in the past.”
