State Auditor Brian Sonntag finds Sound Transit has failed to comply with a legal requirement to conduct annual comprehensive performance audits
Sound Transit replies that it will not comply
Washington State Auditor Brian Sonntag's audit team has conducted a performance audit of Sound Transit. The audit report was released on October 4, 2007 and is posted here in pdf.
The top detailed finding in a list of 20 findings on pages 4-6 is that Sound Transit has not commissioned an independent comprehensive performance audit every year.
The State Auditor concluded that the Sound Move Plan and Resolution 75 approved by voters in 1996 require Sound Transit to conduct such an audit every year. The Auditor's report provides a detailed example (shown below) of why this would be a good idea even if there were not such a legal requirement.
The State Auditor then recommended that Sound Transit comply with the requirement by commissioning such independent performance audits annually.
Sound Transit was offered the opportunity to respond to the finding, conclusion, and recommendation, and did so in writing in the report.
Sound Transit's response, in summary, is "NO," Sound Transit won't do this; Sound Transit intends to do only an annual financial audit.
The State Auditor provided the final word, repeating that Sound Transit should conduct a comprehensive performance audit, because the intent of the 1996 Sound Move plan was to provide the public with an annual assessment of the performance and management of Sound Transit.
The Auditor concludes, "interpreting this requirement as only having to conduct comprehensive, annual financial audits misleads the general public and does not meet the intended outcome of the goal."
What will happen next as a result of Sound Transit's defiance in the face of the Auditor's finding, conclusion, and recommendation is not clear. The State Attorney General and the Citizens Oversight Panel both have a stake in the outcome of Sound Transit's refusal to comply with the Sound Move commitment, in addition to the interest of the general taxpaying public in the Sound Transit district.
Sound Transit wrote in its response to the Auditor that the State Attorney General has reached a legal interpretation that is "not inconsistent with our own legal interpretation." The Auditor wrote back, "We believe the intent conveyed to the voters, regardless of Sound Transit’s internal legal opinion, was for performance audits to take place."
Further Detail
In its performance audit of Sound Transit released on October 4, 2007, the Office of State Auditor included the following result, described as a finding and a conclusion:
Sound Transit has not Commissioned Annual, Independent, Comprehensive Performance Audits Limiting the Ability to Identify and Address Budget, Schedule, and Scope Issues
The following is the text of the Auditor's report on pages 31-35 justifying this finding, with underlining added for emphasis of key points:
The following discusses the issues Sound Transit encountered regarding cost, schedule, and scope changes relating to the Central Link Light Rail Project and provides recommendations that will contribute towards Sound Transit’s present culture of continuous improvement. The Citizen Oversight Panel (COP) — the 15-member volunteer committee appointed by the Board — was created to oversee and monitor the implementation of Sound Move. In addition, the COP is mandated to oversee the completion of annual, specific assessments through independent performance audits.
As an independent group charged with this purpose, the COP’s input is central to ongoing year-to-year management decisions. Evaluating project alternatives, capital and operating budgets, financial plans, management of the regional fund, equity in sub-area budgets and reporting, adhering to schedules and budgets, and reviewing annual performance audits is paramount for accountability.
Performance audits are crucial to helping the COP assess the health of the organization. In addition, performance audits enhance transparency of operations and practices, increase accountability, and provide recommendations for improvement. The intended impact is increased efficiency and effectiveness of the audited entity.
Independent, comprehensive performance audits have not been conducted annually. Sound Move states, within its Public Accountability requirement that the RTA will:
a). Conduct an annual comprehensive performance audit through independent audit services;
b). Appoint and maintain for the ten-year construction period a citizens' oversight committee, charged with an annual review of the RTA’s performance audit and financial plan, for the reporting and recommendations to the RTA Board." In addition, Resolution 75 states: To ensure that the ten-year development and implementation program occurs within the framework and intent of the financial policies approved by Resolution 72, the RTA will conduct an annual comprehensive performance audit through independent audit services and appoint and maintain a citizens’ oversight committee for the ten-year construction period.
The oversight committee is charged with an annual review of the RTA’s performance audit and financial plan and for reporting and recommendations to the Board."
Sound Transit’s legal counsel has previously advised the Sound Transit Board and the COP that the COP is only required to review Sound Transit’s annual independent financial audits to assess compliance with the financial policies adopted as part of Sound Move. However, language stated within Sound Move, Resolution 75, and the financial policies approved by Resolution 72, specifically requiring an annual comprehensive performance audit, appears to go beyond a financial audit. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) defines a performance audit as follows:
Performance audits provide an independent assessment of the performance and management of government programs against objective criteria or an assessment of best practices and other information. Performance audits provide information to improve program operations, facilitate decision making by parties with responsibility to oversee or initiate corrective action, and contribute to public accountability. The term performance audit is used generically to include work classified by some audit organizations as program evaluations, program effectiveness and results audits, economy and efficiency audits, operational audits, and value-for-money audits.
This definition is widely publicized and accepted. By specifically using the stated terminology annual comprehensive performance audits implies to the average reader that an assessment of operational efficiency and effectiveness as it relates to public accountability will be conducted. These types of audits have not taken place on an annual basis.
Since comprehensive performance audits were not carried out on an annual basis, strategic action plans addressing the cause of the budget, schedule, and scope problems were not implemented in a timely manner. For example, a performance audit that was limited to Sound Transit’s cost estimating systems and project controls was not carried out until 2001. The audit found that when the estimating guidelines were completed, they were issued (February 1999) but never formally implemented during the development of the earlier project estimates. As a result, it appears there were some deficiencies in the development of the earlier estimates. Based upon a review of the available documentation as well as interviews with various Project personnel, some of these deficiencies were discovered or noticed during [Deloitte & Touche’s] D&T’s assessments.
Sound Transit noted on their website that the same auditor "concluded that Sound Transit used adequate methods and data in developing its current Link light rail cost estimate." This is an example of a reactive rather than proactive process. Sound Transit would have benefited from a proactive audit plan.
Sound Transit’s lack of annual performance audits since 2001 has made it a challenge for the COP to address the cause of problems. In April 2005, the COP’s Sound Move Year 8 Report noted ten "lessons learned." However, the causes of these issues were not identified. A comprehensive performance audit would have provided a mechanism to identify those causes. This has made it difficult for the COP to measure whether Sound Transit has addressed why problems occurred and how Sound Transit’s culture of continuous improvement mitigates the risk of the addressed problems happening again.
Recommendations identified in annual performance audits should also be followed-up upon in subsequent years to assure status of implementation, benefit, and validity.
Recommendation #1a: We recommend Sound Transit initiate annual comprehensive performance audits, incorporating a process of review and reporting on the status of actions and progress on previous report recommendations.
Recommendation #1b: We recommend the Citizen Oversight Panel ensure annual comprehensive performance audits are conducted and reported to the public and the Board when they have not been performed.
The Performance Audit report then provides this text written by Sound Transit that responds to recommendations 1a and 1b, underlining added for emphasis:
Sound Transit appreciates the benefits that can be identified through independent review of Sound Transit’s operations. Over the last ten years, Sound Transit has been one of the most frequently audited governmental entities within the State of Washington. Appendix A-3, for example, identifies forty-nine (49) different audits that were previously completed, many of which were targeted performance audits. In fact, between 2003 and January 2007, Sound Transit had an independent Performance Audit Committee, which was tasked with planning, directing, and monitoring performance-based audits focused on agency deliverables and outcomes. Upon passage of I-900, which gave the State Auditor's Office performance audit authority, Sound Transit sunsetted this committee.
Additionally, as the auditors have noted in this report, Sound Transit has internally identified numerous lessons learned from the construction of the Initial Segment. Many of these lessons learned are already in place, and Sound Transit is in the process of incorporating others.
Independent review and auditing plays an important role in the refinement of procedures.
However, because the auditor’s conclusions conflict with settled Washington law regarding the applicable legal rules of statutory interpretation, Sound Transit disagrees with the auditor’s interpretation that Resolutions 72 and 75 require comprehensive, annual performance audits of all of Sound Transit’s operations. In fact, Sound Transit’s Board previously requested a legal analysis of this very issue.
That legal analysis, which was made available to the auditors during the audit process, demonstrates that Sound Transit’s governing documents plainly require only that Sound Transit perform a comprehensive, annual financial audit. We understand that this issue has also been reviewed by the State Attorney General in past years, and that the AG’s conclusion is not inconsistent with our own legal interpretation. In accordance with this interpretation, we have conducted such an audit each year and have made the annual financial audit available to the COP each year to ensure compliance with the adopted financial polices (e.g., subarea equity) as legally required by Resolutions 72 and 75.
Comprehensive, annual performance audits of all of Sound Transit’s operations are also unfeasible. By way of comparison, this audit was only of Link construction, and it has taken more than seven months to complete and, although not actually tracked, has likely required well over a thousand hours of Sound Transit personnel time, in addition to the cost of the auditors. A comprehensive performance audit as suggested by the auditors, however, would encompass all of Sound Transit’s operations, including the construction, maintenance, and operations of Sounder Commuter Rail and Regional Express bus service, as well as all of Link operations and all of the various departments and operations that support Sound Transit generally. The magnitude of such an audit would easily increase by a factor of five or ten, resulting in a cycle of perpetual audits requiring the addition of full-time audit support personnel and disruption to normal activities.
Perpetual audits would also create no lag time between audits to allow for evaluation and incorporation of recommendations and lessons learned. Follow-on audits would be conducted prior to there having been time to incorporate recommendations from the prior audit. For all of these reasons, comprehensive, annual performance audits of all of Sound Transit’s operations are not only not legally required, they are also logistically unfeasible.
As noted, Sound Transit appreciates the value of both self-evaluation and external evaluation. We intend to continue to self-evaluate and implement lessons learned as they are identified. As we have done in the past (see, for example, the eight previous performance audits identified in Appendix A-3), we will also continue to request our own limited performance audits that are focused on areas that have been specifically targeted for evaluation. Finally, as required by our governing documents, we will continue to perform a comprehensive, annual financial audit every year.
To conclude this section of the Audit Report, the State Auditor responded to the Sound Transit with these concluding remarks, underlining added for emphasis:
Performance audits help insure that Sound Transit efficiently and effectively spends Washington State taxpayers’ dollars. We believe the intent conveyed to the voters, regardless of Sound Transit’s internal legal opinion, was for performance audits to take place. The language stated within Sound Move, Resolutions 72 and 75, specifically state that annual comprehensive performance audits are to be performed. We believe that the common definition of performance audits coupled with the placement of the requirement within the public accountability statement of Sound Move, indicate the intent to provide the public with an assessment of the performance and management of Sound Transit. Interpreting this requirement as only having to conduct comprehensive, annual financial audits misleads the general public and does not meet the intended outcome of the goal.
Finally, note that CETA spotted this gap in Sound Transit's performance in 2003
Citizens for Effective Transportation Alternatives (CETA) and the Public Interest Transportation Forum (PITF) provided the first public notice of Sound Transit's deficiency in conducting annual comprehensive performance audits. PITF published the following information in summer 2003 on the World Wide Web of the Internet, and alerted journalists via email:
In 2003, CETA members Will Knedlik and Emory Bundy uncovered that Sound Transit up to that point in time had never conducted a "comprehensive performance audit through independent audit services" in the seven years since voters approved its Ten-Year Regional Transit System Plan, a requirement of the Plan and subsequent Board resolution. This issue is documented in the following description from Emory Bundy:
Sound Transit Executive Director Joni Earl sent a memo to the Sound Transit board, August 26, 2003, titled "Report on performance audit request." (Download this document in pdf, with reference documents included.) She contends that the agency is not obliged to conduct a performance audit, as described in the Ten-Year Plan and in Resolution 75. However, the language of the Sound Move Plan adopted by voters in 1996 is clear on the promise of an annual comprehensive performance audit:
"Sound Move: The Ten-Year Regional Transit System Plan
Appendix B: Financial Policies
"To insure that the ten-year construction program development and implementation occurs within the framework and intent of these [financial] policies, the RTA will:
a) Conduct an annual comprehensive performance audit through independent audit services;
b) Appoint and maintain for the ten-year construction period a citizens' oversight committee, charged with an annual review of the RTA's performance audit and financial plan, for reporting and recommendations to the RTA Board."
There is a Federal interest in the conduct of these performance audits, because of the probability that they would reveal problems pertinent to the successful completion of the Link Light Rail project as defined by a Full Funding Grant Agreement. The need for such audits has been clear for years.
For example, back in September 2000 there was a "Call for an Independent Audit" made by 88 citizens of the central Puget Sound region. Sound Transit officials declared in response on September 6, 2000, that the agency had been "audited to death," there were "no cost overruns," and anyone who suggested otherwise was "twisting the truth." At the time, Sound Transit officials were in possession of bids for the Capitol Hill tunnel, the cheapest of which was $300 million more than the budget. They also knew that the right-of-way costs in the Rainier Valley were multiples of what they were representing; they were claiming $42 million, the next month they admitted $90 million. The current budget is $233 million. Independent estimates of cost overruns on the 1996 plan for 21 miles of light rail now come to about five billion dollars.
Sound Transit is obligated to commission an "annual comprehensive performance audit through independent audit services," just as it's obligated to "appoint and maintain a citizen's oversight committee for the ten-year construction period." Furthermore, it is the explicit responsibility of the Citizen Oversight Panel to conduct "an annual review of the RTA's performance audit and financial plans" That is what the Citizen Oversight Panel is created to do: review the annual performance audit and financial plan and, having done so, make reports and recommendations to the board. It cannot do its job unless the annual, independent performance audit is conducted--that's a fundamental precondition of its mission.
At the oral hearing for the Sane Transit v. Sound Transit lawsuit before the State Supreme Court, June 10, 2003, Justice Sanders directly asked Sound Transit's chief counsel, Desmond Brown, whether the agency is obliged to observe all the provisions of Resolution 75, or whether it is free to select and observe some portions, and not others. Mr. Brown was unequivocal, and declared: "All of them."
"REGIONAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY RESOLUTION NO. 75
"Section 5. To ensure that the ten-year development and implementation program occurs within the framework and intent of the financial policies approved by Resolution 72, the RTA will conduct an annual comprehensive performance audit through independent audit services and appoint and maintain a citizens' oversight committee for the ten-year construction period. The oversight committee is charged with an annual review of the RTA's performance audit and financial plan and for reporting and recommendations to the Board."
Transportation
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sound Transit defies law requiring annual performance audit
Friday, March 7, 2008
Feds look into Fraud at the Port of Seattle
Last updated January 7, 2008 11:16 p.m.
Audit alleging waste, fraud catches U.S. attorney's eye
The U.S. Attorney for Western Washington is conducting a criminal investigation of the Port of Seattle based on a state performance audit of the port's construction management, which found the port wasted $97.2 million during contracts active from 2004 to 2007.
While the FBI did not corroborate that it is taking part in the investigation, Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said the agency investigates cases for the U.S. attorney, who prosecutes those cases.
Emily Langlie -- spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Western Washington, a division of the Department of Justice -- would not comment on which federal enforcement agencies are investigating the matter.
"The letter needs to speak for itself," Langlie said. "Federal law enforcement is very well-skilled, and they will be handling it. ... Generally, they come to our office with what they've discovered, ask us to look at it and then we would determine whether laws have been broken and what should be prosecuted."
Sonntag said representatives from several overlapping federal agencies -- including the FBI, the Justice Department and the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation -- "have had some preliminary meetings with some of our folks, to begin asking questions because they want more information and are asking for some of our work papers."
Langlie declined to comment on what shape the U.S. attorney's criminal investigation will take. But Jeff Coopersmith -- a criminal defense attorney with DLA Piper, which he joined after serving as an assistant U.S. attorney -- said the U.S. Attorney's Office "has obligations to look into violations of federal law," such as mail or wire fraud.
Without commenting on the audit findings, Coopersmith said the federal investigators would likely be "looking to see whether in this situation, there have been misrepresentations of material facts, intentional omission of material facts, whether there were kickbacks or bribes. That is the stuff that criminal investigations are made of."
Black's Law Dictionary defines fraud as "a knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment."
The federal investigators can use a grand jury to subpoena witnesses and documents, said Coopersmith, who added that proving fraud doesn't have to mean catching someone in the act of pocketing money.
"A scheme of fraud could be depriving others of their intangible right to honest services," said Coopersmith, who said that "employees hiding facts so that people make decisions in a certain way" could qualify.
Above all, the audit found that the staff misled the five commissioners elected to oversee the port, leaving details out of memos that accompanied briefings, which are supposed to inform the commission so it can take action. On Tuesday afternoon, the commission is slated to review a 1994 decision in which it delegated much of its contract oversight to the port staff, which the audit described as proceeding to abuse the power through omission and misrepresentation.
The audit found that former Port Chief Mic Dinsmore and Aviation Director Mark Reis broke state law by negotiating a $125 million third-runway embankment contract with a TTI Construction principal at a steakhouse, keeping its cost within the port's procurement policies through cosmetic changes in order to avoid notifying the commission that the sole bid was vastly over the port's estimate -- and leaving the commission of the loop.
If the federal investigators or the fraud auditor the port plans to hire find fraud, new Port Chief Executive Tay Yoshitani has said he will "deal with it swiftly and appropriately." But on Monday, he said he has no plans to discipline those employees who violated state laws.
"We will be clear on expectations, and if people violated those expectations, we have clear rules going forward, and then we would take severe disciplinary action," Yoshitani said. "But to go back to these people who were working in that environment" -- which he earlier described as "get it done now, worry about the paperwork later" -- "and to take any disciplinary action against them would be, I think, unfair."
On Monday, Yoshitani sent a letter disputing some of the audit's central findings, saying what the audit described -- the port wasting $60.5 million by padding its staff with consultants on a contract that grew from $3.5 million to $129 million without a bidding process -- is consistent with "best industry practices."
During an interview, Yoshitani said he did not mean to say in December that the port agreed with the audit's findings, but rather that it would proceed with the recommendations -- regardless of whether port staff accepts the basis for them.
In its written response to the audit, the port fought, sidestepped or ignored major parts of the auditors' analysis, reserving its most strenuous objections for the audit's identification of 47 different situations that could be indications of fraud.
"The $60 million -- the allegation that that was wasted -- is just unfair and inaccurate," Yoshitani said.
In late December, Yoshitani described how the 1998 contract with Parsons Transportation Group allowed the port to use consultants to complement its staff and fill the gaps of uneven project timing during the third runway's construction.
But the audit's criticism of the port's practices did not deal only with the fact that the contract was reupped annually without competition for 10 years with the approval of the port's five-member elected board of commissioners, who again voted to expand the contract to $136 million in December. The auditors also lambasted the port for paying Parsons for overhead such as office space, as well as general and administrative expenses that the port was already subsidizing.
"As a result, the contractor and its subcontractors are reaping windfalls under this arrangement, and the (port) is paying substantially more than it would need to pay if it had simply hired employees to fill these positions," the auditors wrote. The port is paying as much as 216 percent of what it would have paid to fill the positions with regular staff, the audit found.
Yoshitani said that approving consultants' billing rate increases without reviewing them "needs to be changed," but said of the other "incidentals -- like working in our office -- I view that as part of the negotiations," which took place under Dinsmore.
Dinsmore could not be reached for comment Monday, but he told the Seattle P-I in late December that "I have no doubt that there is nothing of substance in anything that has been alluded to. Let the process show what I just said to be true."
When asked whether he thought the audit contained nothing of substance, Yoshitani said: "I don't know. He was here when all that was happening, and I wasn't, but just based on the findings, on the suggestions that we were vulnerable to fraud, I have to bring closure to it, and the only way I can bring closure to it is to follow up on some of those areas where the auditors suggest vulnerability of fraud."
The audit described a port staff that let money leak from contracts big and small; that failed to rein in late and costly projects and the contractors who ran them; that intentionally altered contracts to avoid state law's public bidding requirements and, when those rules were followed, steered such contracts to preferred bidders, manhandling the rules and the port's own procurement policies to guarantee their reward. It was during the course of those actions that the port may have committed fraud, the audit said.
The audit, the scope of which included examining how well the port kept its records, also found that the port had altered documents needed for the audit, patching holes in records, correcting mistakes and eliminating inconsistencies as it went along.
In his letter Monday, Yoshitani said staff did not alter records but rather "did catch up on backlog filing and documentation."
"The information was not changed, it was updated; it wasn't altered, it was updated," he said. "I guess you could make the case that updating the report is altering the report, but that's not the way we looked at it."
The port's response to the audit's findings does contain "some pushback," Yoshitani conceded. "That's where the cultural change has to take place. In the final analysis, I am the CEO, so they have to comply with what I want. What I want is compliance with statutes, with our policies, and there are certain policies that need to be reviewed."
Monday, March 3, 2008
WS Performance Auditor Under Attack from Dems & Unions.
Last updated March 3, 2008 11:11 p.m. PT
Bill aims at paying audit costsMeasure would reimburse education groups
Who should pay for audits meant to assure good governance?
That debate has been stirred up in Olympia by Senate Bill 6450, which would require educational service districts and school districts to be reimbursed for costs they incur while collecting information for the Washington state auditor's performance audits.
Depending on the angle, the bill is either fair compensation to school districts or a swipe at State Auditor Brian Sonntag's office.
Those who support the first interpretation say it is only fair that agencies be compensated for the time and money spent cooperating.
"We had to curtail a lot of our regular activity in order to meet the requirements of the audit," said Stephen Nielsen, president of the King County Washington Association of School Administrators and finance officer for the Puget Sound Educational Service District. "People were taking time away from their other jobs, and it put us behind in our budget and finance departments."
Sonntag believes the cost to the agency is more than offset by the potential savings identified as part of the audit, and his office considers the bill the first of many small cuts aimed at chipping away at the authority voters granted him with the passage of Tim Eyman-sponsored Initiative 900 in 2005.
Washington's nine educational service districts, which provide training, technical assistance and support to public and private school districts, were the first to be reviewed by Sonntag's office under I-900 and are not slated to receive retroactive compensation.
"We hear time and time again from school districts: Quit sending us unfunded mandates," said Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Bellevue, the bill's lead sponsor. He added that the contracted auditors' information requests to the educational service districts alone totaled 27 pages. "The auditors get paid for their time, but school districts are expected to take it out of classroom funds."
While the bill's fiscal note labels the costs of cooperating with the auditors as undetermined, Bill Keim -- the president of the Educational Services Districts Superintendents Association -- said the cost to the Thurston County district he oversees was "significant" -- totaling $35,000 for just the initial data collection and auditor interviews.
In a February letter to the Legislature, Sonntag wrote, "our first nine performance audits have made 434 specific recommendations and identified more than $3.2 billion in potential cost savings. Clearly, these audits have shown their value."
I-900 dedicated one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the state sales tax to pay for the audits, totaling about $14 million each in 2006 and 2007, according to auditor spokeswoman Mindy Chambers, who said the office has $14.7 million banked in reserve thus far.
"This is an attempt to take the funds allotted by I-900 and move in a different direction," said Sen. Joseph Zarelli, the Senate Ways and Means Committee's Republican leader who was in the minority of that committee's 13-3 vote on the matter. "The findings pay for themselves because they've shown the districts the way to save millions of dollars."
The public school districts have not yet been audited under I-900.
Those who believe the bill is an attack on the auditor's newly won authority see it as a precedent that could open the door for other disgruntled agencies to ask for the same guarantee of cost reimbursement. If its provisions were extended to include more and more agencies, the Auditor's Office would be hamstrung and, with it, the voter's will, they say.
"It is bad public policy to single out one agency to get special treatment because it opens up the door for other agencies to come in and ask for funds," said Amber Gunn, director of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Economic Policy Center, who described the bill as a raid on the auditor's funds.
Sonntag -- fresh from a slowly healing tussle over his performance audit of the Port of Seattle, which spawned a federal criminal investigation -- believes some agencies would use the bill's proposed reimbursement structure to bleed his office of funds through unnecessary delays, a concern echoed by the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank.
Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, said the bill could actually help further the interests of both the auditor and the audited agencies by providing some seed capital to put into practice the recommendations that are part of each audit report.
"They are costly to implement," McAuliffe said. "If (the agencies are) reimbursed, perhaps they could be able to move on and implement the recommendations: otherwise, they would be coming to the state and asking for it out of our operating budget."
The bill's sponsor believes that education's primacy in the Legislature's Constitutional mandate sets his bill apart from others that might follow.
"Schools have a constitutional mandate that they are our paramount duty, so I do think there are cases where schools should have advantages versus other programs," Tom said. "I don't think it sets a precedent; all we're trying to do is account for the full cost of the audit."
The bill must be acted on before March 13 to become law this session, and as of Monday it was not set for the last scheduled public hearing of the House Appropriations committee that must review it. However, the bill has been thought to be dead in the past only to be resurrected for Thursday's 26-22 vote, which sent it out of the Senate and to the House.
