SacBee | A new state audit concludes that California state departments
illegally pad their budgets with millions of tax dollars earmarked for
employee salaries by manipulating their payroll to make it appear they
have more employees than they do.
The report released Friday on
the Department of Finance’s website did not include an estimate of how
much money departments hoard by breaking the law, but it confirms a 2014 Sacramento Bee investigation that concluded tens of millions of tax dollars earmarked to pay workers is hoarded and funneled to other purposes.
By
law, departments are supposed to forfeit money for a position that goes
unfilled for six months, returning it to its source fund for
reallocation. But as The Bee’s report and the new state audit found,
departments deceptively move employees between jobs ahead of the
six-month deadline. They accomplish the phony transfers by altering the
identifying job numbers to make it appear that a position was filled
with a transferred employee, thus avoiding a cut to their budgets.
The
unspent salary can then be used for other operating costs, such as
paying off leave balances, covering office rent, purchasing new
equipment or funding employee raises. The Bee found instances of
employees “transferring” between positions in as little as two days. In
one instance, a Department of Food and Agriculture worker moved 14 times
through nine positions in one fiscal year. Her title and workplace
never changed, but the serial numbers the state used to identify her
position changed repeatedly.
