To the editor:

I, as I’m sure many Rhode Islanders are, am tired of hearing horror stories of state government ineptitude, which leads to wasteful government spending. 

The latest story to hit the news is, of course, that the auditor general, after conducting an extensive investigation since last June, found that the state of Rhode Island overpaid insurers more than $200 million during its expansion of Medicaid, as a result of deficiencies in the state’s financial controls and bookkeeping. 

During his investigation, the auditor general also found $1.8 million in unrecorded receipts that accumulated in a Division of Motor Vehicles bank account, as well as a missed debt payment on a $25 million bond and security gaps in the state’s unemployment insurance database. Enough is enough!

It goes without saying, that government has been inefficiently and ineffectively spending money for too long. We should be able to catch this before hundreds of millions of Rhode Island dollars are misspent, or in some cases, squirreled away in a “lock box” without anyone knowing it’s there.

The auditor general cites deficiencies in the state’s financial controls and bookkeeping as the culprit for the overpayment of insurers, a “formula error in a spreadsheet” to blame for the Rhode Island DMV never recording $1.8 million, an error by Wells Fargo Bank for not telling Rhode Island it had a payment due, and inadequate security controls at the R.I. Department of Labor and Training which allowed claim representatives to manipulate data on unemployment insurance claims. These are nothing more than excuses, to hide the fact that elected officials hired to protect the taxpayers of the state of Rhode Island are not doing their job.

Gov. Raimondo has made provisions in the budget to combine auditors under one umbrella. It’s basically an inspector general, without calling it that, which is what I proposed in late January. It’s high time we worked to prevent wasteful spending, rather than spend time and money discovering what went wrong, when the system is set up for failure, from the start.

My proposed legislation (2016-H 7430) would authorize the creation of the position as an independent administrative agency charged with the responsibility to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in the expenditure of public funds. The position would be appointed by a majority vote of the governor, attorney general, and the general treasurer for a five-year term. 

As the governor has shown, there are already plenty of government resources devoted to auditing government, and no additional spending is necessary for this office. My legislation would also give the inspector general’s office subpoena power for documents as well as witness testimony. These existing resources would be consolidated into the new independent Inspector General office. 

By creating this independent position we are saying to taxpayers that we are serious about spending their money wisely and tightening the reins so that no public official will feel they can mismanage taxpayer dollars without being discovered, and depending on the degree of mismanagement, potentially prosecuted.

Rep. Daniel P. Reilly

R-District 72

Middletown, Portsmouth