OKLAHOMA CITY – The state’s Office of Management and Enterprise Services functions like a monster truck where nothing seems to work, the Senate Chairman of the Retirement and Government Resources committee said recently.
Speaking at an interim hearing at the state Capitol, state Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, said OMES had major problems.
“OMES has become a monster truck that nothing seems to work on,” Bullard said. “The tires are all flat, it has no radio because somebody stole it. The engine doesn’t work and it burns oil anyway. We have lots of problems with OMES, but I think those services can get back on track.”
Bullard isn’t the only state official raising concerns about the agency.
State Auditor and Inspector Cyndi Byrd on Aug. 27, released a scathing 341-page audit that tracks how state agencies spend federal funds. Byrd’s audit reviewed how the state spent more than $14.9 billion in federal grant funds.
Byrd said the audit found a record number of questioned costs which totaled $93.4 million. She said a “questioned cost” was any expenditure that doesn’t comply with the law, cannot be documented, and/or appears unreasonable or unethical.
Byrd said the combined questioned costs from the last three Federal Single Audits stands at more than $186 million.
“OMES mismanaged more than $21.8 Million in grant money earmarked to provide rental assistance to Oklahomans during the pandemic,” Byrd said in a media statement accompanying the audit. “As a result, an estimated 7,659 Oklahomans could have received rental assistance but were denied.”
In the audit, OMES was criticized because “management did not develop an appropriate internal control system and management failed to clearly document internal controls and all processes applicable to eliminating journal entries in order to ensure organizational knowledge is retained and documentation is readily available for examination (internally or externally). Also, management did not periodically review policies, procedures, and related control activities for continued relevance and effectiveness in achieving the entity’s objectives or addressing related risks.”
Those complaints included statements that OMES did not have the proper controls in place to ensure that state purchasing rules were followed for Coronavirus Relief Fund consulting contracts.
The audit also reported that “OMES did not have a process in place to review potential fraud identified by the subrecipients and ensure that the agency’s response was adequate,” adding that “OMES also did not have a process in place to ensure subrecipients were adequately evaluating for the types of fraud that may occur or identifying fraud risk factors applicable to the ERA program.”
During the interim hearing, Bullard said lawmakers need to tweak OMES’s operational process but he stopped short of placing the blame for the issues on OMES’ current chief, Rick Rose.
“I think Rose is doing what he can to get OMES back on track,” Bullard said. “But we have to safeguard the system. We’re run into the situation in government where the kingdom matters more than the public.”
For his part, Rose told lawmakers his agency welcomed working with the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency to improve its operational structure. He said his agency has been given more than 1,900 legislative responsibilities.
“We think we should find a limited number of things we do really well that fit in that goal of are we saving the state money, are we creating efficiencies, are we making agencies’ jobs easier to do,” Rose said.
Byrd said lawmakers should focus on improving the state’s financial structure.
“Politicians can argue over which services the government should provide,” she said. “But everyone can agree that fraud, waste, and abuse is unacceptable. It is past time for Oklahoma to get its financial house in order.”