Corrective Action Plans

Finding 2024-002 Significant Deficiency, Inaccurate Schedule Of Expenditures Of Federal Awards Personnel Responsible for Corrective Action: Monet Edwards, Finance Director Anticipated Completion Date: October 15, 2025 Corrective Action Plan: The City will strengthen internal controls by requiring that all new grants have a pre-audit meeting for between the Department Head administering the grant and the Finance Director to review all relevant grant paperwork and the SEFA spreadsheet.

Material Weakness, Inaccurate Schedule of Expenditures Of Federal Awards (The SEFA) Personnel Responsible for Corrective Action: Samantha Martin, County Administrator Anticipated Completion Date: 12/31/2024 Corrective Action Plan: The County agrees with the auditor’s recommendation to improve its internal controls by implementing additional training and oversight of personnel to ensure the SEFA accurately reflects all federal expenditures for the fiscal year properly. The County is in the process of implementing an accounting software package with a corresponding month and year-end closing process to ensure balances are reconciled and reviewed.

Finding 2023-002 Significant Deficiency: Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) – Control Finding; Personnel Responsible for Corrective Action: Pete Vujcich, Public Works Division Manager; Anticipated Completion Date: June 30, 2024; Corrective Action Plan: In 2021, El Paso County recognized and appropriated $4 million from a CDOT grant (Fed) and $831,501 of local match that was provided by PPRTA (reimbursement) for construction on the South Academy widening project. The overall South Academy project is funded by PPRTA but managed by El Paso County. In May of 2023, PPRTA issued a Purchase Order for $59,965,997.99 to SEMA Construction and the construction contract with SEMA was executed. In December of 2023, SEMA performed work on the project resulting in billings of $4,456,362.07. A payment application was sent to the construction management firm (Wilson & Company) on January 17, 2024 from SEMA. This payment request was rejected due to insufficient certified payrolls. On February 27, 2024, Public Works received an invoice package with all required documentation. During February 2024, Public Works realized that PPRTA would not be able to submit for reimbursement because the IGA was directed to the County and not PPRTA. At that point, the project manager requested a 2024 Purchase Order to pay this invoice. On March 6, 2024, Public Works submitted the 2024 invoice along with a 2024 Purchase Order to Accounts Payable requesting payment was made to SEMA. At that point, the payment was issued and booked to 2024 without recognition of the actual work performance period. Since the invoice was booked in 2024, the expenditure was also not reflected on the 2023 SEFA. As soon as this expenditure was brought to our attention, we immediately requested Accounting record the $4.5 million on the 2023 SEFA. Standard operating procedures include a request of all project managers to identify any anticipated invoices that will be received in the following year to identify any potential reclassification situations. In this particular case, the project manager did identify this project, and anticipated payment request. At the time, this project was a PPRTA run project, and would not have had an impact on the county’s financial reports. Previously, Public Works had a very manual SEFA reporting process in place. Public Works just went live with a new Capital project tracking platform called eBuilder. eBuilder has a required field on the pay app approval screen that requires employees to enter the billing period start and end dates. When Managers go into eBuilder to approve payments, they are required to ensure the billing periods match the payment dates. In addition, as a double check, Public Works is working on customizing eBuilder to flag approvers if the invoice date has a different year listed than the billing period. Public Work has done training with employees to ensure employees understand the additional components of a progress billing pay application, to include timing issues with the review and approval process utilized. We have also reinforced the importance to communicate the correct year expenses were incurred when submitting to Accounts Payable and Accounting. eBuilder will allow Public Works to run reports showing expenses for the correct year. These reports will then be submitted to Accounting to assist with the SEFA preparation. Public Works is confident that all expenditures will be recorded correctly on the SEFA moving forward.

Finding No. 2023-001 Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards Personnel Responsible for Corrective Action: Name: Edith Robles Department: Finance Title: Director of Finance Anticipated Completion Date: June 30, 2024 Corrective Action Plan: An adequate system of internal controls will be put in place by the end of fiscal year 2024. To ensure SEFA will include accurate assisting listing numbers and accurate inclusion of all federal programs. Allowable and unallowable costs will be reviewed to ensure accurate federal expenditure reporting. Edith Robles will perform an exhaustive review of all grants to close out the fiscal year in preparation for the audit process. In addition to these, SWOP will work with a consultant to provide necessary training of finance personnel.

Inaccurate Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (The SEFA) Personnel Responsible for Corrective Action: Roxy Custer, Accounting Manager Anticipated Completion Date: December 31, 2023 Corrective Action Plan Broomfield agrees with the auditors? recommendation to continue working and strengthen internal controls by implementing additional training and oversight of personnel to ensure the Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) accurately reflects federal expenditures for the fiscal year. Staff will continue to map the respective Assistance Listing Number (ALN) numbers to align with the corresponding project codes within the financial system. The Accounting division will ensure that employees responsible for preparing and reviewing the SEFA receive additional training and oversight so they understand the reporting requirements outlined in the Uniform Guidance.

Management?s Response/Planned Corrective Action: This item was an audit finding on the 2020/21 audit report. Upon identification of the issue as of March 2022, we created additional controls as outlined in the corrective action plan submitted with the audit at that time. We believe this finding is primarily related to the months prior to us being made aware of the issue. We have made the necessary corrections and have been maintaining proper backup for the reports since the initial finding. Heather Kimmel, Assistant Executive Director is responsible for the corrective action plan.

Finding 2022-002 Material Weakness, Inaccurate Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) Personnel Responsible for Corrective Action: John Moore, Director of Finance and Leon Hanhardt, Superintendent Anticipated Completion Date: September 30, 2023 Corrective Action Plan: District personnel will agree amounts reported on the SEFA to the corresponding expenditures recorded in the general ledger and an individual independent of preparation of the SEFA will review the report.