Audits show millions owed to state govt
A “mind-boggling” sum of money is being left on the table by Baker administration offices, a former state inspector general said, commenting on dual audits showing hundreds of thousands owed on leased state land and millions in unemployment insurance payments left uncollected.
“Sometimes it’s just the mindset of government officials who don’t really care that much about collecting tax money,” said Gregory Sullivan, former state inspector general. “It’s hard work to do, and it’s easier not to do the work.”
Yesterday, an audit detailed that the Department of Unemployment Assistance had $284 million in delinquent accounts of businesses required to pay unemployment insurance. Of that, the department had taken no major steps to collect on $170 million.
“That is a mind-boggling number,” Sullivan said. “That’s astronomically large in the scale of state government.
“No business would do this, no person, no household would do this. It demonstrates a lack of loyalty to fellow citizens to let that money go down the drain,” he added.
On Thursday, State Auditor Suzanne M. Bump showed the Department of Conservation and Recreation, as of June 30, 2017, failed to collect some $600,000 in user fees on leases for cell towers and other telecommunications equipment, concession stands, skating rinks, cottages, and boat and yacht clubs.
DCR confirmed that two yacht clubs still owe a combined $13,000: The Neponset Valley Yacht Club owes $8,000 and the Wollaston Yacht Club owes $5,000. The department estimates that once credits and fee corrections are accounted for, the unpaid amount will be closer to $80,000.
Gov. Charlie Baker defended his offices’ work saying at DCR and DUA the “long-standing” issues were being “whittled down.”
Baker said, regarding the DCR sums, there has been “progress on that issue over the last few years, but it’s a long-standing problem and we have a long way to go.”
Systems at the unemployment offices were replaced from 2009 to 2013, Baker said, but the new ones “have never really worked the way they were supposed to.”
He said the issue has been “driven by technology implementation, and it’s much less a problem now than it used to be as we continue to whittle it away,” Baker said.
Sullivan said the problems at DCR stretch back to his time in office a decade ago.
“The state administrators at DCR are not collecting money that belongs to the taxpayers,” Sullivan said. “It’s a failure to perform, and I hope the governor’s office will step in.”