Legislative Joint Auditing Committee – June 12, 2009
Posted on June 12th, 2009
Date & Time: Wednesday, June 12, 2009 at 9:00 AM
Location: Room 171, State Capitol Little Rock, Arkansas
Agenda: http://tr.im/oh6Z
Attachments: none
9:05 am – The Reports of the Executive and Standing Committees are being reviewed. Senator Pritchard gave executive report. There are some big developments concerning the audit of Tobacco Settlement money and agencies.
9:15 am – The Shortage Updates were reviewed. There was significant discussion about the Pine Bluff School District and audit findings.
9:23 am – Currently reviewing the Levee District Performance District.
9:30 am – All of these audit reports that we are reviewing can be accessed by the public here: http://www.legaudit.state.ar.us/. The ones that we are currently looking at will be posted by this afternoon.
9:41 am -Significant discussion about the lack of common standards for the maintenance of levees. There is a diversity of governmental organizations that are responsible for maintaining levees has created a coordination problem.
9:47 am – Rep. Burris is inquiring why the Vicksburg Levee district has been unresponsive to the committees request for information. This is fundamentally why we have the problem with the levees. When the local districts and counties are unresponsive to requests of the Corps of Engineers, then the Corps turns the maintenance and responsiblity over to the local district. The core of the problem is probably just local apathy.
9:56 am – John Sweeney with the Arkansas Natural Resources District recommened that the legislature develop state legislation to deal with manage and enforce the maintenance of the levee systems in Arkansas.
10:03 am – There is some confusion because there is Drainage Districts, Irrigation Districts, and Levee Districts that are sometimes working at cross purposes. Any solution will need to incorporate a way to coordinate all three improvement districts.
10:05 am – Rep. Hall expressed concern over how the local improvement agency boards would react and resist the state control over the local districts.
10:10 am – This levee situation has significant political ramifications. Issues such as local control, property rights, infrastructure needs, taxing authority, and other nasty political topics come into play.
10:12 am – The Levee District Oversight Report is adopted as review and has been forwarded to ALC to send to appropriate standing committees for interim study and develop future legislation to address these issues.
10:20 am – Currently reviewing the special report on case prioritization and turnaround of the Arkansas Crime Laboratory. There have been significant improvements in the performance of this organization.
10:22 am – I am concurrent with live reporting this committee attempting to put together a post about special actions the legislature is taking concerning the Tobacco Settlement Proceeds Act funds. I will try to make that post immediately following this meeting.
10:25 am – The Arkansas Crime Laboratory Special Report was adopted as reviewed.
10:26 am – We are currently reviewing the Performance Audit Report for Evaluation of Academic Facilities Transitional and Immediate Repair Programs Disbursements. There is also a corresponding report for the Facilities Partnership Program Disbursements.
10:30 am – Four and a half years doing this job and I still feel like I am drinking from a firehose pointed at my face…. can we call it information-waterboarding?
10:33 am – There are some interesting graphs in the Academic Facilities Performance Audit reports. Apparently districts in the third district recieved substantial state funds but had a very large local percentage of contributions. This is probably due to growth. Other schools around the state, even though they would have gotten a much larger percentage of contributions, did not have the need for new construction. The report adopted as reviewed.
10:40 am – Committee adjourned.
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