From the Northwest Indiana Times:
Indiana's State Budget Committee is planning an independent audit of the Indiana Department of Revenue. The most obvious question Hoosiers should ask: What's taking so long to get this audit started?
The Department of Revenue made the news when it lost track of $320 million in corporate tax revenue collected over four years. A programming error was blamed.
Then the agency discovered another $205 million in county income taxes wasn't distributed as it should have been.
That's more than a half billion dollars in misplaced money. That's inexcusable.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Luke Kenley, a member of the State Budget Committee, told The Associated Press last week that state lawmakers consulted with state budget director Adam Horst the week before to draw up the formal request for an external auditor.
The responses are due by Wednesday. The State Budget Committee is planning to review them June 4.
The external review will include a risk assessment process, expected to last three to six weeks, that will determine the nature and scope of the audit. Then will come the audit itself. And how long will that take? It isn't clear yet.
"My understanding is they are moving as fast as they can," Kenley told the AP.
That seems pretty slow, given both the seriousness of the problem and the time that has elapsed since the programming errors were found.
...
Waiting so long to get this audit started threatens to turn it into a political circus instead of a straightforward response to major flubs at an important state agency.
Daniels should have moved swiftly to start the external audit after the second error was found.
The probe shouldn't be seen as a witch hunt but as a way to ensure there aren't other errors that haven't yet come to light. Get any problems fixed immediately, before they're compounded.
Hoosiers deserve more speed and efficiency than they've seen in the response to this crisis.
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-what-s-taking-so-long-for-external-audit/article_bad61bc0-2bcb-59b2-a6d9-f657faa1c037.html
