The Rockford Register Star set up the next bit of the report well with the following story:
SPRINGFIELD — When Gov. Rod Blagojevich set out to streamline government at the start of his term two years ago, he pushed a law requiring agencies to put money saved from operating efficiencies into a special savings account.
But state audits show that the 2003 cost-saving plan led to widespread confusion among state agencies, which raided their own programs — ones that didn’t necessarily correspond to areas of cost savings — to find money to chip in to the savings account.
At the same time, the bulk of the cash from the agencies was simply funneled through the savings account to the Illinois Department of Central Management Services, the state’s central procurement and management agency, and general operations.
The so-called savings were supposed to correspond to efficiency devolving from CMS, which now manages contracts and facilities previously handled by individual agencies. But the individual agencies had trouble identifying savings that trickled down to them.
Conversely, the Department of Transportation (IDOT) was billed $17,061,200 during FY04 but Department documentation showed that IDOT only saved $1,232,179 from the procurement efficiency initiative. Consequently, IDOT paid $15.8 million more into the Efficiency Initiatives Revolving Fund than the Department of Central Management Services documentation showed IDOT realized in savings. Likewise, the Department of Revenue (DOR) was billed $4,321,900 during FY04 but only saved $238,302 from the procurement efficiency initiative. In total, Department documentation showed that there
were 4 ?Winners? and 35 ?Losers? from the efforts of the procurement efficiency
initiative. The chart below summarizes the percentage of billed savings actually realized by the State agencies:
Much more there for detail, BTW.
The State Finance Act clearly states that the scope of CMS? charge was to identify ??. where cost savings are anticipated to occur.? The Department
took efforts to anticipate as precisely as possible where cost savings would occur. Thus, CMS did adequately determine the amount of savings.? The auditors seek to hold the Department to a different standard than the statutory one: that the Department must identify were cost savings occurred, and then using this unilaterally re-written standard, find that the Department failed to meet the correct statutory requirement. Such a conclusion is not only contrary to the statute, but also illogical.
? Given the cost savings are anticipated, not actual, a measure of deviation is reasonable.
Auditor Comment:
Comment 96: The Department?s citing of the State Finance Act is not relevant to this finding. In this finding, the Civil Administrative Code is used as criteria. 20 ILCS 405/405-292.
Comment 97: Given the large discrepancy between procurement savings billed and savings realized by most State agencies, the auditors concluded that the ?measure of deviation? experienced not was reasonable.