So many audits, so little time

Close to one of every four work hours available to auditors this year would be taken up doing just two audits, according to a work plan presented to the Budget and Finance Committee earlier this month.

Elizabeth Begay, acting auditor general, had allocated 1,000 hours to audit the discretionary funds of the council and speaker, and another 1,000 hours to audit the Diné Power Authority.

With only eight of 12 auditor positions filled, Begay has only 8,918 audit hours in a year.

For fiscal 2010, she divided the time to perform audits on 20 chapters and 15 programs, telling her oversight committee that the discretionary funds and DPA would take up a lion's share of the time because both would be first-time audits.

In addition, the discretionary fund audit will cover three years, 2006-09, because it is mandated under a council rule adopted in 2007.

Another 200 hours were allocated to audit the Office of the First Lady, a task that may be dropped when the council meets Dec. 1 to approve Begay's work plan. (See separate story)

Other details of the proposed 2010 work plan for auditors are as follows:

• 250 hours will be needed to finish the 2008-09 audit of the Navajo Nation Fair.
• Other program audits nearing completion are the Business and Industry Development Fund, which was allocated 40 hours, and the $8 million Veterans' Fund, which will require 300 hours.
• Audits of the local governance centers and the Department of Information Technology were outsourced and are nearly done. These will require 30 hours of time by Begay's auditors to wrap them up.
• Three "special investigations" were also carried over from the previous year - the Diné College Wisdom of People Grant (100 hours), Diné Poultry (200 hours) and Dilkon Community School.

Begay said no hours were allocated for the Dilkon school audit because of the auditor shortage.

• Five tribal programs are in need of corrective action plans, a follow-up procedure when an audit shows problems. The affected programs and the amount of hours they will require this year are Head Start (400 hours), Navajo Technical College (150 hours), the Veteran Affairs Department (80 hours), the Navajo Area Agency on Aging (150 hours), and the Department of Workforce Development.

Begay reported that lack of auditors prevented her from assigning audit hours to the workforce development audit.

She noted that the aging program, the Capital Improvement Office and the Insurance Services Department are under sanction by the B&F committee, and said the latter two would be allocated audit hours as soon as auditors become available.

Begay also identified four chapters that are under sanction but were not allocated audit hours because there aren't enough auditors - Sawmill, Kayenta, Red Valley, and Bodaway-Gap.

"We just simply do not have the resources to accommodate all the audit requests," she told the budget committee.

Among the 20 chapters slated for attention are three seeking Local Governance Act certification, which each received 300 hours in the auditors' budget. Those chapters are Sweetwater, Nazlini and Blue Gap-Tachee.

New audits are planned for seven chapters, including "special reviews" for Coalmine Canyon, Fort Defiance, Smith Lake, Teec Nos Pos and Wide Ruins chapters. Each of the five was allocated 200 hours of auditors' time.

Two chapters, LeChee and Alamo, would get regular audits. LeChee is expected to take 60 hours, while Alamo would need 350 hours because it's a "full scope" audit, Begay said.

Another 11 chapters need follow-up visits to see if their corrective action plans are working. Ten were allocated 150 hours each: K'ai'bii't&ooacute;, Tonalea, Upper Fruitland, Houck, Lupton, Ramah, Baca, Chinle, Shiprock and Klagetoh.

One chapter, Thoreau, was not assigned any audit hours due to the auditor shortage.

Begay also allocated 1,000 audit hours for "consulting services," under which her office provides financial management assistance to various tribal programs, commissions and standing committees.

The B&F committee directed Begay to return with a revised plan reflecting its recommendations, which include making the chapters a priority, expanding the discretionary fund audit to include the president's office, and deleting DPA and the first lady's office from the audit list for this year.

The committee is scheduled to meet Dec. 1 and take action on the revised audit plan.

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