Ohio Auditor Dave Yost’s report comes after a long fight with state leaders and the legislature.
"This has been a difficult audit," Yost said. "And you know, there was some arm wrestling along the way."
But the findings of Yost’s audit don’t show the agency might be guilty of wrongdoing. The report looked at JobsOhio during 2012 and did find some problems with the way the organization handled issues.
"What we found is on the control side is consistent with what you might find in a first-year start up corporation," Yost said.
The audit raises questions about $60,000 JobsOhio spent for which there are no receipts. The report also finds some JobsOhio directors failed to sign ethical conduct pledges. But it also finds that there were no problems that were discovered as a result of not having those pledges in place.
"The fact of the matter remains that had there been one, the then existing processes could not have been counted on to detect it or to resolve it," Yost said.
JobsOhio Board Chairman Jim Boland says he’s pleased overall that the report was positive and largely identified minor discrepancies that are not uncommon to other companies during their first year in business.
Yost says his office "haphazardly selected” 28 project files to review. That’s a point that Yost’s opponent next fall, Democratic State Rep. John Patrick Carney, seized upon when he was asked his take on Yost’s audit.
“You know, to publish something in which you indicate that you took a haphazard approach to reviewing any potential conflicts says to me exactly what he did," Carney said. "They took a haphazard approach to doing their job. And that is disappointing especially given the fact that taxpayers are paying his salary along with the salary of very person who's employed at the auditor’s office. It is not acceptable to take a haphazard approach to doing your job.”
Carney says Yost could have had access to more complete documents to review if he would have acted immediately instead of waiting for the new law restricting Yost’s control over the auditing of JobsOhio to go into effect.
“He has essentially sat on his hands while he did have access to documents and information," Carney said.
Carney says Yost gave in to the governor and legislature with this audit by not delving deeper into the specifics of the agency.
Yost says that’s not true. And while he says he’s never going to be able to do an audit like this one in the future because of the new law, Yost notes he will have a part in helping to deal with private audits prescribed by law in the future.
But will he be able to demand enough transparency to know whether he’ll be able to detect possible problems?
"This report is a pretty careful, pretty detailed look under the hood -- what was happening in 2012," Yost said. "Going forward, there is a process in place, and it’s kind of asking a mechanic, 'What’s wrong with my car?' before the mechanic looked at the car. I’ll have to get back with you on that."
Yost also explains the word haphazardly was used in the report to mean something different than what Carney implies.
“What we mean colloquially about that is 'random,'" he said. "Now random has a specific statistical meaning, so the accountants used the word 'haphazard' but what they mean is they picked some stuff to look at without any particular rhyme or reason.”
Yost says he will be taking the most active role as allowed in the new law when it comes to monitoring JobsOhio’s audit process in the future.
“I don’t have the directive hand here. I just have one seat at the table, probably over in the corner," he said.
