Finding Text
2022-010 – Improper Payments Requested for Reimbursement
Finding Type: Significant Deficiency in Internal Controls and Noncompliance (Allowable
Costs/Cost Principles, Reporting)
Federal Program: U.S. Department of Transportation – Airport Improvement Program (AL
#20.106); Grant Number: 3-26-0031-046-2021 (COVID-19 Coronavirus Response & Relief
Supplemental Appropriation Act - Airport Coronavirus Response Grant Program)
Criteria: Costs charged to grants and included in reimbursement requests should be free of
improper payments, including (1) payments that should not have been made or that were made in
incorrect amounts (including overpayments and underpayments) under statutory, contractual,
administrative, or other legally applicable requirements; (2) payments that do not account for credit
for applicable discounts; (3) duplicate payments; (4) payments that were made to an ineligible
party or for an ineligible good or service; and (5) payments for goods or services not received.
Condition: The Airport Manager prepared reimbursement requests by manually transferring data
from the general ledger to summary spreadsheets. During this manual process, the decimal place
on one item was slid to places to the left ($6,599.00 rather than $65.99) resulting in the request for
reimbursement being overstated. In addition, select reimbursements for fuel purchases were
transferred with the inclusion of taxes resulting in the request for reimbursement being overstated.
As the Delta County Airport is the sole provider of fuel on the airfield, fuel prices submitted for
reimbursement should reflect bulk fuel purchases only with taxes removed. The Airport incurred
other expenses during the period that would have been eligible costs and that would directly offset
the noted overstatements. However, the reimbursement requests that were filed included the errors.
Cause: The County does not have controls in place to review and approve the costs reported as
allowable on all reimbursement requests.
Effect: As a result of this condition, the reimbursement requests submitted for this program
included improper payments that should have been replaced with other eligible expenses.
Questioned Costs: No costs have been questioned as a result of this finding.
Recommendation: We recommend that the County implement controls to ensure a secondary
review and approval process is put into place for all reimbursement request submissions so that
only allowable costs are charged to the grant.
Views of Responsible Officials: The County will work to implement controls to ensure that
reimbursement requests and related expenses are reviewed and approved for compliance.