I may be dating myself, but the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
We can get much more than an ounce’s worth of prevention by engaging in post-election process audits. It is much easier to fix process problems early before they blow up and become problems that require litigation and other nasty fixes. Ahead of the 2024 election, state legislatures should require full process audits to ensure transparency and build trust in our elections.
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Recent audits show that poor accounting practices can cause Pennsylvania townships to lose out on thousands of dollars, either in interest from a pension fund or from state aid.
A September audit of Dunkard Township in Greene County, for example, found that administrative mistakes caused an overpayment from state aid, among other issues, and required the township to repay nearly $5,000.
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Despite claims from Biden administration officials that new funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will not increase the auditing burden on individuals and small businesses, a Friday letter from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reveals new auditing activity targeting taxpayers who report less than $400,000 per year will be expected to contribute to about $4 billion in revenue.
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In an audit for the Central Bucks Regional Police Pension Plan, the auditor general criticized officials for inconsistent and authorized pension benefits. Pension plans are governed by Act 205 and Act 600 in state law, which sets regulations and guidelines on allowable pension benefits.
However, the latest collective bargaining agreement between police officers and the regional police commission “granted a length of service increment in excess of the plan’s governing document,” the report noted.
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Included in the Democrats’ Build Back Better Act currently before the U.S. Senate is a proposal to allocate $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to hire nearly 87,000 additional agents – a plan opposed by a majority of voters recently polled.
The BBBA proposal also comes after numerous reports show years of examples of agency problems costing taxpayer money.
According to a new HarrisX poll, 58% of likely voters said they think increased enforcement would impact middle class taxpayers the most; 23% said it would only impact the wealthy.
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The Wisconsin Elections Commission will soon answer the charges from an October audit that found dozens of instances when the commission didn’t follow the state’s election laws.
Commissioners are scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to provide an official response to the audit’s questions, and Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, is very interested to hear what the Commission has to say.
“The audit is damning,” Brandtjen told The Center Square on Tuesday. “It makes it very clear that WEC is not doing its job.”
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The head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission is promising to answer what she says are “misconceptions and misunderstandings” from the state’s recent audit into the 2020 election.
WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe on Thursday said she and the commission will address the finding of the Legislative Audit Bureau report at the commission’s December meeting.
“We’re pleased that overall, the LAB report confirmed the November 2020 general election was conducted accurately and fairly,” Wolfe said in a statement. “And while there’s always more to be done to ensure consistent election administration in Wisconsin, and we’re working on that every day, we also know there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings built into the LAB’s findings, and that record needs to be corrected.”
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