USF response to operational audit puts retirees at the end of the line

Update (2/21/08): Administrators have contacted the chapter in the past day to indicate that all of the individuals affected were in the College of Medicine, and that the timeline indicated in USF’s response was an estimate of HR as to when they could be reasonably sure the switch in processes would be complete. We’ve suggested creating intermediate benchmarks before the end of the fiscal year and will update this entry or write a new one when more information is available.

This morning, the St. Petersburg Times made available the state’s operational audit of USF for the last fiscal year, which essentially is a checkup on the university’s basic financial operations. There are a number of items you’d expect (the university needs to do a better job of checking up on the commissions that vendors owe it, check up on residency of students, P-Card controls), some items that affect employees in reimbursable costs (university-subsidized cell phone usage, or travel reimbursement per diems), and then a surprising finding:

Our test of termination pay for 5 employees who terminated during the 2006-07 fiscal year disclosed that 1 employee of USF Health had not been paid for unused leave. Subsequent to audit inquiry, the employee was paid for 92 annual leave hours totaling $1,818, 134 days after their termination date. A further review of USF Health records disclosed that as of June 8, 2007, an additional 12 employees who terminated between July 14, 2006, and March 19, 2007, had not been paid accumulated annual leave totaling $38,794. Of the 12 employees, 2 still had not been paid amounts due as of November 13, 2007.

In other words, the university did not pay attention to the leave time owed faculty who retired, resigned, or otherwise left their jobs. This was one of 13 findings in the operational audit, and USF’s Chief Financial Officer Carl Carlucci promised to fix all of them. Here is the order of the issues that he said USF would address, and the implementation dates:

  • Travel Per Diem (finding 10), June 2007
  • Imprest Bank Accounts (finding 1), January 2008
  • Access To Business Applications (finding 11), January 2008
  • Student Fees (finding 5), March 31, 2008
  • Competitive Procurement (finding 8), March 31, 2008
  • Information Technology – Application Environment (finding 13), March 31, 2008
  • Decentralized Collections (finding 6), April 30, 2008
  • Cell phones (finding 10), April 30, 2008
  • Tangible Personal Property (finding 2), June 30, 2008
  • Auxiliary Vendor Contracts (finding 3), June 30, 2008
  • Auxiliary Credit Union Contract (finding 4), June 30, 2008
  • Purchasing Cards (finding 9), June 30, 2008
  • Leave Pay on Termination (finding 7), July 31, 2008

In other words, retiring employees owed a payout for leave time are at the end of the line, the very lowest priority, and the implementation date for fixing this is after the end of the current fiscal year.

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