A janitor who lost his job at a Virginia armory when it closed in January 2010 was still being paid for nearly a year because he was filing falsely approved timesheets that continued to processed, a state audit shows. The employee of the National Guard Armory in Big Stone Gap in southwest Virginia not only received more than $15,000 in improper payments, but the Department of Military Affairs actually sent him a letter in October 2010 thanking him for his service.
The Auditor of Public Accounts declined to release the employee’s name because the matter has been turned over to the Virginia State Police. A police spokeswoman said that the investigation is ongoing.
A regional manager failed to alert human resources that the employee was no longer working, and people in both the finance and personnel offices were not even aware of the facility’s closing, the audit said.
“It could have happened elsewhere, but we didn’t find anything else,” said Walter Kucharski, the state’s auditor of public accounts. “It pointed out a bigger problem as to how they manage everything in the armories.”
The Department of Military Affairs operates 46 National Guard armories throughout the state, including several in Northern Virginia. The state and federal government share the operating and maintenance costs.
The audit found that the armories’ regional managers were not reviewing or approving expenses or payroll timesheets and were not getting financial information needed to monitor expenses.
The department has taken a number of steps to correct the issues. Supervisors at each location now electronically sign and validate timesheets, and two new employees have been added to provide additional oversight.
Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Long Jr., the adjutant general of Virginia, “has directed that the appropriate steps be taken immediately at all levels of management to ensure proper policies and control measures are in place and these measures are being followed by the Department of Military Affairs personnel,” spokesman Cotton Puryear wrote in an email.
The new safeguards are not 100 percent, but go a long way toward fixing the problems, said Kucharski.
“On paper, it looks like it should work,” he said.
The department is slated to receive $9.3 million in the next fiscal year for armory improvements — a combination of bonds, federal fund and special revenue funds.
