What Did the State Auditor Say about VDOT? (Part I)

Governor Kaine, the loonies in the state Senate and the tax-happy crowd want us all to pay higher taxes for transportation. While I would agree we could use more money for transportation, there are a number of serious issues that should be addressed before Virginians pay higher taxes. Here's one of those problems.

VDOT has no internal cost controls. This is what the state auditor's December 2005 report had to say about this issue.

"Once the Board [the Commonwealth Transportation Board] completes and approves the SYIP [Six Year Improvement Plan], the Department uploads the plan into the Financial Management System (FMS). Project managers are to use the information provided by FMS to track project expenditures; however, the system does not provide any controls to prevent a project from exceeding its approved budget. Rather, it is the responsibility of individual project managers to ensure actual expenditures are within the approved budget. Transportation should consider the implementation of this type of budgetary constraint in the current upgrade of the Financial Management System." Page 9.

This is a very serious problem that results in wasted tax dollars. We should see a second audit to see the progress, if any, that VDOT has made before we pay higher taxes. Pouring more money into an agency that has no mechanism to control its cost is not good public policy.