Having joined you in making “draconian budget cuts” in our own businesses and households, the ones missed by Gov. Martin O?Malley and the state employees we pay him to supervise are staggering.
A cursory look through Department of Legislative Services audits and news reports shows potentially millions in waste and fraud could be eliminated from the budget with no harm to the rest of us. The rising cost of newsprint steers us away from sharing the whole awful list. But these examples illustrate a Maryland budget in need of a fat-farm experience:
» An audit found that the Family Investment Administration gave assistance to 52,000 people who did not have valid Social Security numbers in 2006. The Department of Human Resources, which oversees FIA, since verified that 37,000 of those people do have real Social Security numbers, but that still leaves 15,000 people who could have been receiving over $3,000 each per year in cash and food stamps who should not have been eligible. Norris West, spokesman for DHR, said eight death match cases have been referred to the Inspector General with a potential loss of about $10,000. Regardless of the final amount, poor oversight at that time opened the door to widespread abuse of the system.
» An audit found that the Maryland Department of the Environment did not disclose a savings of $912,000 on a contract ? so that it could apply it to other projects. It also found that the department did not re-evaluate those receiving exemptions from paying into the Bay Restoration Fund, potentially forfeiting thousands of dollars.
» An audit found that the Department of Veterans Affairs owed $1.8 million for expenditures it could not document.
» A former employee of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene stole $1.7 million from kidney patients.
» An audit determined that at least 22 employees of the state Department of Transportation accessed porn on state computers on a regular basis. Some employees accessed explicit material as often as 2,200 times per week. When did they work? Using the average salary of $49,920 for state employees, taxpayers could save $1.1 million by eliminating those positions.
The millions mentioned above ? a fraction of the waste uncovered by DLS ? is on top of nearly $700 million in sensible cuts suggested by the Maryland Chamber of Commerce. Click here to download the chamber list.
If legislators do not want to listen to us or to their constituents, they should at least trust their own auditors. Ignoring their evidence is akin to being a security guard who opens the bank safe for robbers. Before finalizing the budget, legislators should review every DLS audit and trim from each agency the amount it squandered from taxpayers where waste and fraud were identified. We may not be able to recover money lost to illegal activity, but if it was not missed, it does not need to be in the budget. Marylanders must not finance shoddy record keeping, illegal behavior and poor management.
