ODJFS will begin doing yearly audits of large counties

Misspent total grows for Hamilton County
Ted Wendling; Bureau Chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 20, 2006.

Columbus - Five days after being told to repay at least $223 million, Hamilton County officials learned Tuesday that they must come up with $150 million more.

A special audit released by Auditor Betty Montgomery orders the county to transfer the misspent $150 million to its children's services fund.

Unfortunately for the county, that goal isn't easily achieved because $139 million of it must come from the public assistance fund, which contained less than $20 million as of June 30.

Last week, the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services accused its Hamilton County counterpart of running a shell game in which the county illegally transferred money between funds and routinely collected double reimbursements from the government.

Montgomery's audit, which focused on the county's children services property tax levy and other spending over which the state human services agency lacked jurisdiction, found that county officials commingled federal, state and local dollars and repeatedly transferred federal money from their restricted children services fund to the public assistance fund.

The effect of those transfers, the audit said, was to enable Hamilton County to collect millions in added federal dollars by falsely attesting that public assistance funds were local-match dollars.

An FBI investigation found no evidence of fraud. That leaves the motives of county officials open to speculation, Montgomery said in an interview.

"What we're left with is either there was some creative accounting going on so that they could draw down more federal dollars, or robbing from Peter to pay Paul so that they didn't have to raise taxes, or a genuine misunderstanding of program requirements," she said.

County officials did not respond to a request for comment, but in the audit they said state officials never required them to identify sources of local funds.

They also invoked a "don't ask, don't tell" defense, saying the state "did not provide guidance on how to calculate the local match." Nor did they ask.

"They'd been participating in the program since 1997 with 13 other counties," said Jon Allen, spokesman for the state Department of Job & Family Services, referring to the county's misuse of money for ProtectOhio, an experimental foster care program. "If they were unclear about anything . . . they had seven years to ask about it."

Montgomery's audit does fault state human services officials for failing to audit the Hamilton County agency from 1993 to 2003, when both special audits began. As a result, Allen said, the department will begin doing yearly audits of large counties such as Hamilton.

The Hamilton County audits follow other findings in recent years involving major misspending of human services money.

In 2001, Ohio recovered just $3 million from Accenture after state officials admitted that they allowed the contractor to virtually write its own contract to deliver the since-trashed $60 million Ohio Works job-matching program.