Performance audits

A program intended to help people in low-income housing eventually buy their homes has yet to be used, according to a new performance audit by the Office of the Washington State Auditor.

The federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program is intended to encourage development of affordable rental housing, but a few program projects allow tenants to buy their homes. The Housing Finance Commission manages this program in Washington.

Medicaid provides needed health care for more than one in four people in Washington, at a cost of about $19.6 billion a year. However, Washington also pays millions of dollars for Medicaid coverage of people already insured by other states, according to a new performance audit by the Office of the Washington State Auditor.

More than a decade after voters approved legalizing recreational marijuana in Washington, the state still lacks a system able to track cannabis from production through processing to retail sale, according to a follow-up performance audit released today by the Office of the Washington State Auditor.

Washington colleges and universities accept nearly all the college-level credits students earn in high school – if the students follow through on a crucial step in the transfer process, according to a report released today by the Office of the Washington State Auditor.

Each month, Washington relies on the aging Agency Financial Reporting System to process $4.3 billion in payments. In less than a year, the state plans to move to a new administrative system, a necessary but immensely complex information technology project affecting more than 100 agencies.

The project is overseen by the One Washington program, which chose Workday, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system, to modernize the state's administrative systems.

Like most states, Washington reports shortages of qualified special education staff. Without properly trained staff, school districts struggle to provide eligible students with important services like lessons to develop study skills, speech or physical therapy, behavior management and vocational education.

Law enforcement officers can seize property they believe has been involved in or is the proceeds of a crime through a legal tool called civil asset forfeiture. The process does not require an arrest, charge or criminal conviction of the property’s owner. 

In a new report, the first of its kind in the state, the Office of the Washington State Auditor described how civil asset forfeiture works, based on an analysis of data and practices at eight law enforcement agencies.  

Certain cities and counties in Washington are required to meet a 120-day deadline to make decisions on development permits. However, the actual processing time varies widely between localities and permit types, a new performance audit found. 

Washington shellfish are enjoyed the world over; marinas connect people with the state’s beautiful stretches of water. Both can rely on publicly owned land under the waves, through aquatic land leases. 

A performance audit published today reviewed the processes for determining the lease rates for aquatic lands, and how those processes contribute to fairness for leaseholders and the state through consistency. 

With limited supplies in greater demand, Washington needs to better understand current water system data to reduce the loss of drinkable water, according to a new performance audit by the Office of the Washington State Auditor.

The Department of Health is tasked with increasing the efficiency of the state’s 2,065 local municipal water systems through both customer-focused conservation efforts and minimizing the loss of water as it travels through the systems.