Like the proverbial Mill of Providence, the V.I. Inspector General’s Office seems to grind exceedingly slow, but it also may grind exceedingly fine.
Charged with the internal oversight of virtually all of the territory’s government operations, agencies, and departments, the lightly-staffed office is currently juggling several different audits, each at a different stage of the audit process. The one closest to completion focuses on the V.I. Lottery proceeds that are allotted to public schools. Others include various aspects of the Water and Power Authority and the administration of the Taxicab Commission.
Meanwhile, the IG Office has just emerged with a good report on its own operations after an independent peer review by a national body known as the Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA).
Inspector General Delia Thomas transmitted copies of the short report to the governor and the Legislature Friday, shortly before the holiday weekend began.
In the understated language of auditors, the ALGA said the Virgin Islands office garnered a rating of “Pass.” There are only three options: “Pass,” “Pass with deficiencies,” or “Fail.” The report covered operations at the IG Office from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2023.
The report does not assess the output of the office. Rather, it determines whether its procedures are proper and reflect accepted standards.
The ALGA concluded that the V.I. IG’s “internal quality control system was adequately designed and operating effectively to provide reasonable assurance of compliance with Government Auditing Standards and applicable legal and regulatory requirements.”
Thomas has headed the office since 2022; before that, she was the deputy inspector general for 20 years.
In an interview with the Source, Thomas reiterated her determination to manage what is routinely an unwieldy workload by dividing up large projects into multiple sections. In the past, she said, the release of an entire comprehensive audit might be delayed while auditors waited for information related to one small part of the report.
The office is trying to ensure that its assignments are “more focused,” she said, so that they can be completed more timely.
A case in point is its work on WAPA, which has been divided into four parts: one covering billing, one looking at collections, a third reviewing employee wage deductions destined for loan payments to the Government Employees Retirement System or other mortgage holders, and finally one assessing contracts.
Preliminary planning has been completed for the first three areas of concern, and Thomas said, “We’re entering the fieldwork (phase) next week.”
The office will take on the fourth and potentially most thorny part – contracts – “down the road,” she said.
Work on the administrative functions of the Taxicab Commission was interrupted last summer when the office closed temporarily, Thomas said. Her office is still collecting information for that audit.
But auditors have gathered what they need for the report on the Education Initiative Fund – money raised by the government-run Lottery and allotted to Education for public schools.
“We’re in the writing stage” of that audit, Thomas said.
It will likely still take about three months before the public sees it, however, according to the inspector general.
That’s because once the report is drafted, it must be edited and an independent third party must verify the supporting documentation for its findings. Then it is shared with representatives of the entity or entities being audited (in this case, several government agencies are involved), and they are given time to respond, generally about a month or six weeks, so their comments are included in the report before it is released.
Typically, the office publishes one, two or three audits per year. In 2023, it did not publish any.
Besides auditing local government functions, the V.I. Inspector General’s Office has been cooperating with federal auditors in their attempts to monitor the excess of federal grants monies pouring into the territory because of the 2017 hurricanes and mitigation efforts related to the COVID pandemic.
Thomas stressed that her office is not directly involved in those efforts but does assist its federal counterparts.
“They know that we’re here and available for them,” she said, adding that her office forwards complaints it receives and can and does assist in some investigations.
