Audit

WASHINGTON -- The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported Friday. This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose national laboratories and factories design and build nuclear warheads, has lost computers. Aside from computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory, and one computer listed as destroyed was being used, the audit said.

A recent audit by a corrections commission deemed the Harford County Detention Center to be in full compliance with state regulations, county officials said yesterday. The Maryland Commission on Correctional Standards conducted the audit Jan. 9-11, Lt. James Eyler, a spokesman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office, said in a news release. The commission audits state, local and private adult correctional facilities. Audit visits typically last three or four days and include inmate and staff interviews.

The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration failed to monitor drivers convicted of drunken-driving offenses and often allowed them to resume driving before they were supposed to, according to a state audit that found numerous other failings in the agency. The audit by the Department of Legislative Services also found that the MVA issued licenses to drivers who submitted Social Security numbers of dead people; that it waited an average of 115 days to suspend the registrations of vehicles found to be uninsured, suspensions that, by law, must be immediate; and that it failed to pull the driving privileges of some parents found to be late in paying child support, as state law dictates.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Comptroller Peter Franchot called yesterday for an expanded review of the state's Minority Business Enterprise program after revelations that a firm headed by prominent GOP women had its application fast-tracked so the company could get a piece of a technology contract with the Department of Human Resources. "This seems to be exactly what an effective program should not be doing," said O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese, adding that the governor intends to look at the program -- which was started in 1978 to help racial minorities and women build profitable companies -- from the "ground up."

The Baltimore County school board approved last night the hiring of a consultant to help administrators institute broad curriculum changes in response to a critical independent audit. The school system will pay $75,000 to Los Angeles-based Arroyo Research Services to create a "curriculum management plan." Sonia Diaz, the school system's chief academic officer, said after the meeting that the plan will focus on bringing cohesion to administrative offices that were operating as "independent silos."

State police released audits yesterday showing that failures to properly log domestic restraining orders, to prevent accused abusers from buying guns, are more pervasive than officials previously acknowledged.All of the 21 jurisdictions audited by the state police frequently failed to correctly enter the protective orders, listing the wrong gender, name or race.The audits released yesterday were of mostly rural jurisdictions. The state police plan to begin auditing Baltimore City today."We are suffering from lack of staff, and I know people are tired of hearing that, but it is very much a reality," said George F. Johnson IV, president of the Maryland Sheriff's Association.

A former Columbia village manager accused last year of embezzling $121,000 from the village and then using that money for personal expenses and to support her son's struggling restaurant was indicted yesterday by a Howard County grand jury.Anne Darrin, 49, of Baltimore was indicted on seven felony and two misdemeanor counts of theft of more than $70,000, prosecutors said, in a case that revealed lax oversight of village center spending.Neither Darrin nor her attorneys returned messages seeking comment.

Twenty-three Baltimore public works employees doubled their regular salaries with overtime last year because the department failed to adequately monitor $15.5 million in extra pay, according to an audit released by City Comptroller Joan M. Pratt yesterday.The audit found that 224 other city public works employees made overtime equal to 50 percent of their salaries between July 1998 and March. One unidentified highway maintenance supervisor with an annual salary of $27,745 made $48,552 in overtime, according to the audit.

Educators shouldn't accept low standardsThe article of July 15 on the establishment of stringent goals to be met by children of the Baltimore city schools clearly shows why our schools are in such sad shape ("Test bar set high for city schools"). For a high-ranking school administrator such as Robert Booker, Baltimore schools' chief executive officer, to state that requiring only one-third of the children to pass the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program is a high standard is tragic.

I think I might know where the missile launcher is.I'm referring here to the $1 million missile launcher that our armed forces have apparently misplaced, according to the recent audit of the U.S. government (motto: "We Do Have A Motto, But We Don't Know Where It Is").You might have missed the news stories about this audit, which didn't get a whole lot of media attention because - as difficult as this is to believe - it had nothing to do with Paula Jones. The background is, back in 1994 Congress decided that there should be a complete audit of the entire federal government.

The Maryland State Department of Education has failed to conduct required inspections at all the day care centers in the state and hired too many temporary educators from local school systems, a legislative audit has found. The education department disagrees with many of the findings in the audit released Wednesday, which has prompted legislators to schedule a hearing Tuesday. The audit found several deficiencies in the department's operations over the past three years, but it was not found to have "serious deficiencies," according to the auditor, Bruce A. Myers.

An audit of a federal grant given to Baltimore for a youth mentoring program found that the funds were poorly managed and officials did not document how all of the $900,000 was spent. The program, called Baltimore Rising, improperly hired and paid 30 workers without giving them contracts, failed to bring contracts to the Board of Estimates for approval, reported inconsistent data to the federal government and did not properly document expenses, according to the audit, which will be released Wednesday.

Audit questions state spending, marketing The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development spent $184,000 on poker tournaments, catered cruises, parties and other marketing events between 2004 and 2007 that were not "adequately evaluated and documented," according to a legislative audit released yesterday. The report also said the department paid employees with no job duties, bought airline ticket upgrades without required approval and gave tax breaks to firms without verifying their eligibility.

A Maryland Transit Administration employee used keys to improperly open bus fare boxes and rail ticket machines, and $475,000 is missing, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. The audit, which criticized the MTA for failing to track employee access to such keys, said the agency referred the matter to criminal investigators at the attorney general's office in January. The report said that as of last summer, the matter was under investigation by state and federal officials.

The state Department of Human Resources has been underusing tools available to collect $1.57 billion in unpaid child support from deadbeat parents in nearly 200,000 cases, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. For example, the department's Child Support Enforcement Administration did not use its ability to have the occupational licenses of delinquent parents suspended, did not always collect and record their Social Security numbers and did not fully use automated techniques to identify and seize their bank accounts, the audit said.

The troubled and costly implementation of "Chessie," a statewide computer system to monitor child services, hampered the Department of Human Resources' ability to ensure compliance with state and federal foster care service requirements, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. Chessie - the Children's Electronic Social Services Information Exchange - is designed to help keep track of nearly 10,000 foster children and 6,000 child protective services investigations. It cost more than $67 million in state and federal funds, including about $10 million to fix flaws.

A sharply critical legislative audit of the state's medevac operation could jeopardize the General Assembly's willingness to spend more than $100 million on overhauling the state police unit's aging 12-helicopter fleet, a key lawmaker said yesterday. According to the audit report, about a third of the state's emergency medical response helicopter fleet was out of service for 51 individual days during the past fiscal year, and the state police Aviation Command didn't adequately track critical data such as maintenance needs and the cost per flight hour.

Anne Arundel County did not err in awarding a $10.8 million artificial turf contract to a politically connected landscaping company with no experience working with turf despite "deficiencies" in the firm's bid, according to an audit released yesterday. But the report criticized the county for signing contracts with a second company, AmDyne Inc., to oversee the bidding process and supervise the construction, saying that the deals were made outside county guidelines. County auditor Teresa Sutherland also found that the director of central services, Fred Schram, spoke on his county-issued cell phone 15 times to the president of the winning company, Sunny Acres Landscaping Inc., before, during and after the bidding process.

WASHINGTON -- Adding to complaints about one of the nation's primary counterterrorism safety nets, a Justice Department audit has concluded that the FBI provided the governmentwide terrorism watch list with incomplete, inaccurate and outdated information on suspects for nearly three years. As a result, many innocent people stayed on the "Consolidated Terrorist Watchlist" long after they were cleared of any wrongdoing, and real threats to national security were sometimes left off the list or not added to it in a timely manner, according to the audit, released yesterday by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

The contractor building a new library at Morgan State University declined to do several million dollars in work on another project that the university asked for, saying it went so far beyond the contract that the work would have violated state procurement laws. Hess Construction Co. told a university construction official that it would not submit a quote to install telecommunications cabling connecting the library and other buildings. In a Feb. 22, 2006, letter obtained by The Sun, Hess wrote, "Our legal counsel also advises that because the work ... is clearly outside the general scope of our contract with the University, directing Hess to perform the work likely would be a violation of the State's competitive bid statutes."