Finding Text
Finding 2022-002 ? Allowable Costs Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Treasury Passthrough Entity: Illinois Department of Revenue Assistance Listing Number and Federal Program: 21.027 COVID-19 Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Criteria: Internal controls should be in place to reduce the risk of noncompliance with grant requirements. Specifically, costs need to be reviewed and approved by qualified personnel to ensure they are allowable costs. In a memo dated January 24, 2017, and approved by the Council, the City implemented procedures that requires all nonunion, non-exempt personnel to clock in and out for each shift. Police and Fire employees have their own sign-in and sign-out sheets that are to be approved daily by their respective supervisors. Statement of Condition: Salaries paid to essential workers to perform essential work during the COVID-19 public health emergency were used for reimbursement under this grant. Selected employees? timesheets did not have the proper supervisor approval. Statement of Cause: Personnel are not properly following the policy put in place by the above-mentioned memo. Statement of Effect: Without proper review and approval, employees may not be compensated correctly which can lead to erroneous payroll tax documents and additional administrative time to correct misstatements. Additionally, if qualified personnel are not reviewing costs associated with the grant to ensure they are allowable, there is a great possibility that unallowable costs could be claimed for reimbursement. This may lead to the City being responsible for reimbursing the grant funding to the awarding agency. Questioned Costs: No questioned costs were identified.Perspective Information: This appears to be a systemic problem. Payroll for essential workers from the 911, Police, and Fire departments from May 14, 2021 to October 1, 2021 was claimed for reimbursement under this grant. We haphazardly selected 5 employees from the pay periods during that time frame and reviewed the daily timesheets for supervisor approval. There were no supervisor approvals on the 911 timesheets and supervisor approvals were consistently missing for Police and Fire departments. Identification of Repeat Findings: Not a repeat finding. Recommendation: Timesheets need to be approved by the supervisor before submission to Comptroller?s office. If the timesheets do not have the proper approvals, then they should not be processed until the signature is obtained.