A state audit report released yesterday found that the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) wasted as much as $1.5 million in overpayments to employees.
Caltrans was aware of the overpayments employees received as early as 2016, according to the auditor’s report. When Caltrains failed to notify those involved within the required three years, it forfeited its ability to recoup the overpayments.
“Inefficiency and incompetency in Caltrans’ division of human resources contributed significantly to its failure to notify recipients and collect on the outstanding salary advances,” according to the report.
Without the audit’s intervention, Caltrans’ uncollected overpayments would have been “significantly” more.
In July 2020, the auditor’s office notified Caltrans about 261 of its employees who received overpayments and whose three-year window of notification was rapidly approaching. In response, “Caltrans expeditiously sent out notifications of overpayments to 130 of the 261 salary advance recipients that we had identified. Its records indicated that it had already sent notifications to the other half of the recipients, with the exception of one deceased individual,” according to the report.
In response to the audit, Caltrans acknowledged it needed to improve its salary advance collection process. The department is also “exploring a permanent database solution for tracking salary advances.”
State agencies are required to report any corrective action to California State Auditor Elaine Howle’s office.
The full report is available online.