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In line with a latest audit by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Workplace, the Louisiana Public Help Program had discrepancies of over $256 million in reimbursement requests.

This system, which is run by way of the Governor’s Workplace of Homeland Safety and Emergency Preparedness, was audited for the interval of Jan. 1, by way of June 30.

Auditors seemed by way of over 2,800 requests totaling round $930 million and discovered exceptions of greater than $500 per reimbursement request equaling about $256 million in 511 reimbursement requests.

An audit exception is any discovering that falls exterior of the anticipated outcomes of an audit after going by way of the required steps. The issues cited fell into 5 classes: Lack of supporting documentation, lacking procurement documentation, out-of-scope bills, errors and ineligible bills.

The primary and costliest class was a scarcity of supporting documentation, which occurred in 358 requests. The bills not supported by invoices, receipts, contracts, and so on. totaled over $177 million and nearly 19% of the overall requests analyzed.

Equally, procurement of reimbursements over $30,000 weren’t documented accurately on 56 events. This equaled $52.6 million in exception quantity.

Fifty two reimbursement requests to the tune of $19.6 million got regardless of the work being exterior the permitted scope of the challenge. meaning 2.1% of the requests studied had exceptions on account of out-of-scope bills.

Like within the case of out-of-scope bills, some exceptions have been ineligible prices as a result of the work didn’t adjust to FEMA rules. This occurred 72 occasions and amounted over $4.8 million in exceptions.

The ultimate kind of exception famous have been errors, which may very well be a results of bills duplicated, incorrect vendor info, and or incorrect bill quantities. This occurred 27 occasions and added to $1.7 million in unaccounted reimbursement cash.

Program officers responded to the audit saying they concur with the audit’s findings and are persevering with to enhance on program administration, diligence and accountability.