Baltimore City overpaid contractors, failed to track payments, audit finds
BALTIMORE -- An audit conducted by the Department of Audits revealed issues with the Baltimore Safe Streets reimbursement process, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) said Wednesday.
The performance audit cited overpayments and duplicate payments to contractors during fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
According to the report, the DOA found three duplicate payments for three invoices in FY 2023 and FY 2024, that totaled to $290,357.
Three more duplicate invoices, for $79,098, $149,528, and $61.731, were paid in July 2022, May 2023, and January 2024 respectively.
The duplicate payments were recovered by the city, MONSE said.
In addition to the double payments, MONSE did not have a process for tracking payments, and did not consistently verify the daily activities of the sub-recipients and employees for its contractors.
The DOA also said the organization processed reimbursements without verifying payroll records - citing six names on approved budgets for some sub-recipient contracts who were not actually employed by sub-recipients. The audit did not find any instances where the city was billed for their services, however.
Following the audit, the DOA recommended that the Director of MONSE:
- Maintain a schedule of approved reimbursement requests and verify if payments have already been made when new requests come in.
- Ensure receipts are matched to invoices in Workday.
- Validate subrecipients' employee activity logs.
- Confirm that salaries billed match payroll registers.
- Recalculate invoice totals to verify the accuracy of billed amounts.
- Implement a secondary review process for invoices prior to payment approval.
The release of the audit comes a day after a report from Baltimore's Inspector General shows employees with the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) told Safe Streets contractors to use fake names on contract proposals.
