Oversight Needed

There's probably no better report out there on the continuing implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) than this one from the GAO. It focuses on general and specific trends in 16 states and the District of Columbia. Most scary are passages like this one, present in sections on each of the states under study:

However, due to the present economic conditions, state officials said the Massachusetts oversight community is facing budget cuts of about 10 percent at a time when increased oversight and accountability is critically needed. To illustrate the impact of the impending budget situation, the Inspector General told us that his department does not have the resources to conduct any additional oversight related to Recovery Act funds. This significantly impacts the Inspector General’s capacity to conduct oversight since the budget of the Inspector General’s office is almost entirely composed of salaries, and any cuts in funding would result in fewer staff available to conduct oversight. In addition, the State Auditor described how his office has already furloughed staff for 6 days and anticipates further layoffs before the end of fiscal year 2009. Similar to the Inspector General’s office, 94 percent of his department’s budget is for labor and any cuts in funding generally result in cuts in staff.

The story is similar in other states. Georgia, for example, has cut its State Accounting Office 43 percent, its Inspector General 19 percent, and the Offices of Planning and Budget and the State Auditor 11 percent each.