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Breaking news
Tuesday, Apr 26, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller Here is the auditor general’s report digest for the CMS audit. And here is the AP story about the audit. More later and tomorrow. UPDATE 1: I’ll get into this much more in tomorrow’s Capitol Fax, but here’s a little nugget. According to the auditor general, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget and CMS took millions from the Illinois Department of Transportation and other agencies that it was not entitled to.
UPDATE 2: IPAM, the company which was supposed to save the state money, didn’t (More in the fax). Also, check out who that same vendor took to a basketball game: Parking reimbursed for the United Center on February 17, 2004. The Chicago Bulls had a home basketball game on that date. The detailed support indicated two names on the parking receipt, a vendor employee and the Department official responsible for monitoring the contract… (emphasis added) That Bulls parking was reimbursed by CMS. Your money. UPDATE 3: What exactly did this company do? In the original IPAM proposal, IPAM would perform all facility condition assessments on 50 million sq. ft. of State-owned buildings. Within its BAFO, IPAM decreased its price but also proposed that facility managers (to be hired for the facility management consolidation process) and not IPAM would perform the condition assessments on the last 40 million square feet. However, on February 4, 2005, the Department published in the Procurement Bulletin a sole source $2.25 million contract for IPAM to perform facility condition assessments. UPDATE 4: CMS refuses to take its medicine and has harsh words for Auditor General Holland. Holland responds: CMS continues to misunderstand and, in some instances, mischaracterize our findings. UPDATE 5: Here’s what CMS had to say about the audit (They’re gonna regret this complaining. Reporters love the auditor general.):
(Click on the image for a larger view.)
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- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:14 am:
So are these audit findings — in general — “a blip”, “bad”, “real bad”, or “yikes”?
Never seen one of these things before. Is it normal to have these sorts of findings?
- ArchPundit - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:31 am:
In short. Hell No.
It’s a brutal audit. Just brutal.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:35 am:
From nearly 30 years experience let me put this into perspective.
CMS’ last audit had six material findings. This audit quadrupled that number. That is not just “Yikes!”, but that’s cause to begin more formal investigations on malfeasance or even official misconduct.
Just one other observation. The last audit occurred during the Ryan Administration. It appears “reform and renewal” have struck again!
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:37 am:
These are really bad. This one:
CMS evaluated vendor proposals using evaluation criteria that were not stated in the RFP.
is the reason the bidding for state employees health insurance was sh_tcanned.
The finding that most of the CMS employees aren’t filling out timecards as required by law is a major ticking political timebomb.
The fact that 2/3 of expenses allowed by CMS were improper will explode immediately.
But the worst is the overall picture painted: the state agency in charge of promoting efficiency and providing management services to all other agencies is inefficient and mismanaged.
In early radio reports, the administration appears to be trying to downplay the audit, and they seem to almost be accusing Bill Holland of having and agenda.
If that’s there strategy, I think trying to downplay the audit is going to backfire, and the Gov is going to sound like he doesn’t take things seriously.
How do you downplay that the majority of employees at CMS are in violation of the state’s ethics law?
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:37 am:
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- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:40 am:
So would it be fair to conclude (and I ask this seriously) that this audit sums up Blago’s 2+ year push for “reform and renewal?”
In other words, Blago stood for reform and renewal — and this audit represents the results?
(I don’t mean this as a flame. I’m trying to figure out the implications. If CMS appears to be this mismanaged and (perhaps) corrupt — then what, exactly, is left?
CMS *is* Illinois government at this point, no?
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:47 am:
The only good news for the Governor is that all of the bad news came out at once — it’s almost too much for the media to cover.
The reaction stories will be great though — can’t wait to hear how the DHC caseworker in DuPage with 1400 active cases feels about CMS bilking her department, or the contractor in Marion feels about the raid on IDOT.
I think this may go beyond yikes. Who’s got the urban dictionary?
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:47 am:
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- ArchPundit - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:48 am:
Pretty much. Corruption is harder to prove, but corruption could certainly easily take root in such an environment that lacks even basic documentation–that evaluations of contracts aren’t even present is a huge red flag.
Making it worse, combining it with previous state agency audits, CMS is less efficient and actually hindering operations in other departments.
The CMS reforms haven’t been covered very well, but I was generally skeptical of the strategies because it seemed directly at odds with much of Reinventing Government that Al Gore undertook at the federal level–this would appear to confirm that suspicion. Instead of decentralizing when possible, the administration centralized everything and essentially was on track to going back to the day of centralized property control of the 1950s, but more expensive.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 11:50 am:
Hmmm. Methinks someone didn’t take the ethics test. (Was CMS exempt from the ethics test, BTW?)
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
- PrairieStateDem - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 12:08 pm:
This is just the tip of the iceburg with this adminsitration.
Who would have though CMS would be more corrupt under Blago than Governor Ryan.
It was great to see Rich’s reference to the Veteran’s issue with CMS. It matches perfectly from what has been going on with vets across Illinois.
Glad he is getting called on this culture of corruption that has existed apprently from day one.
Reform and Renewal…just another Blago big lie…add it to the pile
- ILPundit - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 12:15 pm:
Worst. Audit. Ever.
Read the Department and Auditor comments section…
CMS made this far worse with their agency response. Rather than take the lumps, they essentially declared war on the Auditor General, questioning his motives, ethics, and professionalism.
The most amazing thing to me (so far) is that the administration is treating this as only a PR issue, and don’t seem to be acknowledging the seriousness of the findings.
The tone of the CMS response makes it clear that they have no intent of cleaning things up.
The media will crucify the Governor if he doesn’t clean house over at CMS — and that includes Paul Campbell.
- wildcat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 12:24 pm:
Yikes indeed. How long until the guv spins this audit so he’s the reformer? He’s “searching searching for abuse of taxpayer money.” He’ll make himself the hero somehow.
- Vanilla World - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 12:27 pm:
Can anyone run a government over there? How many times have we discovered that this administration is ran by naive amateurs? They’ve had their chance. It is time for Illinois voters to put the adults back in charge.
This is not reform, it is chaos.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 12:32 pm:
Most state employees (at least those not at CMS) have been aware of the chaos for quite a while now. But it’s difficult to be heard until something like this comes along.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:02 pm:
… contain no - absolutely not one - positive aspect to any of the programs the auditors reviewed …
Okay, maybe someone with more experience can explain this one. Is it the Auditor’s General role to give pep-talks?
Do most audits include positive stuff about what’s being done?
And here’s another dumb question: if some audits do have positive stuff and this one doesn’t - wouldn’t that say more about this audit than the AG anyway?
- MattVarble - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:03 pm:
I’m not surprised that the obvious was put into print here. I liked being ignorant since I doubt anything will be fixed..So we’ll see the obvious finger pointing and dodging and ducking commence.
It was also real nice to see how many thousands of dollars I paid in IL state tax for 2004 from my demanding job as well as my small business and then see more crap like this occur with MY and everyone else’s hard earned money..I see absolutely zero benefit in response to me paying confiscatory state income tax and this just re-affirms the reason why I and many others cannot stand state government agencies.
- MattVarble - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:05 pm:
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- Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:08 pm:
I love that CMS complained that the audit didn’t report on any of the good things they were doing. Apparently, the yahoos in charge don’t know what an “audit finding” is. Hello? They’re always negative.
Rich, the Bulls parking was nice, but I’ll be more interested to see who paid for the seats. We’ve got pretty sticky rules about lobbyists taking people to ball games.
Ilpundit is right, the CMS response makes matters worse. Holland does a good job of avoiding becoming a political pawn. The danger of attacking him and his staff is that they might be less resistant to serving as pawns of the legislative audit commission, which can order an audit of any agency at any time for anything.
The last thing the Gov needs is the Auditor General’s employees showing up gleefully for work and volunteering for overtime. It’s Ken Starr with competence and credibility and a lot of material to work with.
- Drew Hibbard - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:15 pm:
Sheesh, that’s insane. Makes me glad I don’t work for the state.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:23 pm:
Most damning auditor general report I’ve read in 24 years of looking at these things. It’s interesting to look at the findings in this report, and then go back and look at the information released by the feds in the George Ryan/Larry Warner.
A “new way of doing business” indeed. It appears that the only “new” was that the Blago’s folks were more inept.
It will be interesting to see if the governor can “spin” his way out of this one.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:37 pm:
can someone break this down for those of us not familiar with these audits….who takes the blame here?
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:47 pm:
Yellow Dog, if “most” of the CMS employees aren’t filling out time cards, let me ask this…Weren’t “most” of them hired under Thompson, Edgar and Ryan? Just asking.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:48 pm:
Apparently in this Brave, New World, no one takes the blame. Ideally for the Gov, CMS would take the blame. “Yes, we made some mistakes. The audit provides us with good feedback. We will refine our procedures. Blah, blah, blah.”
The more they deny they did anything wrong, the guiltier they look, the more elevated the story becomes. The governor is going to be dodgind questions about this for at least the next two days.
Let’s see if Tusk can earn his pay by shifting the news cycle, maybe tightening the screws on pharmacists? Rod certainly needs to change the subject, but either way, I can hear a damning Tribune editorial coming.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:51 pm:
I for one, am not at all surprised by this audit. This adminstration has placed unqualified political hacks in upper management of the state agencies. In most agencies, the number of employees in upper management has increased, not decreased. When you place unqualified employees and kids right out of college in responsible positions, this is what happens. At least the previous administrations knew how to hide the political hacks so they wouldn’t do any harm! This is only the beginning, sit back and watch the circus.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 1:58 pm:
I agree with anonymous about most employees. Yellow Dog, no response?
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 2:13 pm:
It doesn’t matter (for this particular finding, at least) who hired “most employees” — what matters is how the HR department sets its policy regarding timesheets.
Apparently, CMS’s personnel department hasn’t yet completed the ethics test.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 2:14 pm:
From an earlier comment: “Yellow Dog, if “most” of the CMS employees aren’t filling out time cards, let me ask this…Weren’t “most” of them hired under Thompson, Edgar and Ryan? Just asking.”
From the Holland audit of CMS: “CMS did not maintain time sheets for its employees as required by the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act.”
- Tom DeLay's Mom - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 2:14 pm:
I’ve read a lot of these in my time - these are the most horrendous, damning - downright miserable - audit findings I have ever reviewed. Ever!
Guess we know why Mr. Rumman opted to resign his post as the head of CMS last month - looks like the governor plans to make him - not Filan - the fall-guy on this particular scandal.
The Feds are gonna have a field day with this puppy. Unbelievable!
- wildcat - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 2:19 pm:
To the Anon that posted “Weren’t “most” of them hired under Thompson, Edgar and Ryan?”
This whole I’m not George Ryan thing is over. Congrats Governor, you won an election not being George Ryan. You blamed two budgets on George Ryan. Now people are trying to pin this on people who were hired under previous administrations?
It’s called accountability. I’m not defending George Ryan, but at some point a good (not even great) governor realizes those things which fall under his responsibilty. The current administration, certainly after being in office more than two years, is accountable for what happens in the agencies under their control (like CMS).
Getting elected and governing are two incredibly different things. If the governor hadn’t realized that yet, he just did.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 2:28 pm:
You get 365 days to blame your predecessor.
After that, it’s time to take over the ship and govern.
- NumbersGuy - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 2:57 pm:
A few impressions after a quick read:
1) I agree with the other old-timers that this is the most damning audit in the history of the Auditor General’s office, even going back to Bob Cronson, who was no wallflower, let me tell you.
2) The audit reports that all bureaus of CMS have reduced headcount under Blago, except “Administrative Operations” which is code for the front office and overhead positions. That grew from 80 to 152 positions in a year. That may be caused by the consolidations of legal & audits, but on its face it looks terrible.
3) Most agencies relied on the Governor’s Office “advice” and didn’t make their employees fill out timesheets. Has nothing whatsoever to do with when/by whom you were hired. FWIW, the “advisor” on that issue is now the Deputy Inspector General. Hmmm, will that be a conflict?
4) The quadrupling of findings is a great stat. Good catch to the poster who came up with that. Readers of the OAG’s website will note that this seems to be becoming a trend; the number and severity of findings for the Blago years are up substantially from the 2002 era. Gee whiz, Bradley, maybe a few of those state employees that retired did know you-know-what from applesauce and are missed in these agencies. Time will tell.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 3:01 pm:
Does anyone know where the 61 page suicide note…er…response from CMS can be found? If ever anyone was asking for a tear-down-the-walls audit it has to be these guys.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 3:20 pm:
Another “response” from the governor’s office is coming up at 3:45 - should be fun. Also look for similarly scathing reviews of Revenue, Public Aid and Human Services soon - Holland’s going loco.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 3:49 pm:
For anyone looking for the CMS audit, their responses, etc., go to the Auditor General’s web site: www.state.il.us/auditor
The documents are listed right on the main page. CMS’ responses are in the Compliance Examination, Volume #2. Woo-hoo…it’s a fun read!
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 4:28 pm:
It may be a brutal audit but it’s difficult for the average citizen to understand things like agencies billing other agencies for initiatives, etc.
If anything is to be done about this, a public outcry is needed.
For example, all those folks who want to raise the state income tax…maybe we wouldn’t have to if CMS was doing its job right.
We should all write to our state reps and sens to express our concerns.
However, for the casual observer,
the connection between this audit and Blago’s fitness for office may not be immediately clear.
This is where ambitious Republicans should step up to the plate and start explaining how these findings impact the average taxpayer…in detail.
Will they. Probably not. Remember, the Republicans let Kjellander take 800 thou from that Bear Stears deal with barely a whimper…and under a Democratic governor at that.
There really is a bipartisan combine.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 6:09 pm:
The only disappointing thing about this bombshell is that it takes focus away from the Gov’s Office of Management and Budget. Although our friends at CMS deserve plenty of scrutiny, some of the real schemers have been holed up at OMB. I’d like to see the Auditor General throw the net out a bit further and look at some of the questionable OMB practices.
- Paul Powell - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 6:17 pm:
MattVarble said…
“It was also real nice to see how many thousands of dollars I paid in IL state tax for 2004 from my demanding job as well as my small business and then see more crap like this occur with MY and everyone else’s hard earned money..I see absolutely zero benefit in response to me paying confiscatory state income tax and this just re-affirms the reason why I and many others cannot stand state government agencies.”
Matt, Illinois has the lowest state income tax in the midwest, hardly what anyone might call confiscatory. If you want to get upset about mis-management, go ahead, but don’t blame the entire government for the actions of some clowns and pretenders. Try telling the guy who builds roads or the one who guards prisoners or the one who cares for a profoundly retarded person that you see no benefit from the taxes you pay. That is not what this is about.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 6:37 pm:
At 4/26/2005, Anonymous said…
The only disappointing thing about this bombshell is that it takes focus away from the Gov’s Office of Management and Budget. Although our friends at CMS deserve plenty of scrutiny, some of the real schemers have been holed up at OMB. I’d like to see the Auditor General throw the net out a bit further and look at some of the questionable OMB practices.
I agree 100 percent…as a former, and might I add, loyal employee of OMB I have been waiting for the spotlight to focus on it so that we can watch them scurry.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 7:28 pm:
How do you stop a speeding bullet-train running at full throttle? CMS has so many contracts and procedures in place that will forever change the way Illinois govt. is run (IT, Facilities Management, etc.) that stopping any of them in place will absolutely render the State of Illinois in utter chaos. Starting June 1 is a new fiscal year and this is where the ‘train’ mentioned above gets a full load of fresh fuel. I have never seen any report of govt. (State of otherwise) abuse and total disregard for laws such as this. I expect total and complete “cleaning house” by the legislature, including the office of Gov. and especially OMB after OMB has been exposed for the slimy and illegal deals they have performed on behalf of this totally out of control State leadership.
- Tessa - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 8:18 pm:
I got on the Intranet right before I went into a (off the clock) meeting today. The first words out of my mouth were Holy S**t! Scathing “little” report. I don’t imagine that the people who knew it was going to be bad - the majority- had any idea it was going to be as bad as it was. A two year audit. The last audit had 6 findings and this had 24, 2 of which were repeat findings. I haven’t had time to see which ones were repeat.
Some of what they found were just unbelievable, and how stupid that they didn’t think anyone would notice? Facilities have audits done annually. People come and spend months going over our books and checking things out and they never find this kind of crap.
What I knew before was bad enough, but this almost leaves me speechless. I’m just pissed I’m going to be out of state the next few days and I won’t see this unraveling in the paper and here.
CMS - clearly managed stupidly.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 26, 05 @ 10:36 pm:
It’s 10:30PM and I can picture the Blogohires sitting around in their offices (decorated with new snazzy furniture) staring at each other wondering how they are going to respond to the audit. Start looking for some good boxes, it is never too early to start packing…. Hey dude, anyone want to order some pizza????
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Apr 27, 05 @ 4:31 pm:
Why should signing my time sheet matter? My boss and her boss sit on those for weeks at a time, along with time off requests, annual evaluations and the like. The bosses don’t keep their own time sheets, many times I have seen them leave hours early… we had one that only came in on days when it was too wet or cold to play golf.
Overtime is not paid with cash, you get “compensatory time”, a paid day off which you’re not allowed to take when you want - because the office is too understaffed. Though not so understaffed they couldn’t add four new managers under Blago, one of which will be getting out of their braces Real Soon Now, gosh. Not that they brought in inexperienced pups or anything.
I can’t say much about the other managers, they haven’t so much as walked thru our office in two years, I’m not sure they can find the building on the rare occasions they fly down from Chicago. But I just know they are full of great new ideas on how we can save money by further outsourcing things. That they used to work for the new consultants is, I’m sure, pure coincidence. Take a look at the sterling record CMS’s buddy Bearing Point has working with government management in places like Florida, they make Haliburton look like a convent.
CMS is a good concept that’s been totally taken over and perverted by Blago’s people, who have run the place like the dog who finally catches the car he’s been chasing and now has no idea what to do next. The folks in charge now consider themselves temporary, believing Rod is going to take them all with him to Washington, and they use our resources wastefully because they know they are not staying around to face the consequences, just burn tax money to get what you need, pack up the carpet bag, and blow town before the heat catches up.
CMS should be de-coupled from the governor’s office/control in some way that keeps them politically neutral so people can do their damn JOBS. As long as you let politics interfere with civil service, nothing will improve.