SPRINGFIELD —
Illinois officials are six months late publishing an annual document presenting
the state’s fiscal health in detail, and they are unsure when it will be
released.
The Comprehensive
Annual Financial Report is used by ratings agencies to set the credit rating
for the state — which in turn affects the interest rates Illinois receives for
bonded projects, such as infrastructure improvements.
The problem, said
Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Auditor General Frank Mautino, whose offices
contribute to the document, dates back in part to Republican Gov. Bruce
Rauner’s administration.
“As a result of a
couple of years of non-governance or weakness in controls in certain areas,
like no budget, that has made this year more complex,” Mautino said.
“Therefore, we’re working with the last two agencies on major programs to get
those in a form that we can present it that would be acceptable to the
financial markets and those who are the readers of the CAFR.”
Mautino said he could
not disclose some of the specifics about what is causing the delayed release of
the report because the information contained in outstanding audits is confidential
until published. He said a full explanation will become apparent when the
document is published.
He did say the
process is partly slowed because state agencies do not operate on a uniform
financial system.
The office of the
auditor general is responsible for overseeing the inspection of each agency’s
books and passing that information to the comptroller’s office to compile. But
Illinois, which is the last state in the country to complete its CAFR, has
“basically 268 separate systems, half of which do not talk to each other,”
Mautino said.
Employees of his
office, therefore, need to convert the data before sending it to Mendoza’s
office.
According to a news
release, Mendoza’s office “stands ready, as it has been since December, to
publish the CAFR as soon as the remaining audits are completed.”
The state’s fiscal
year ends June 30. The document was released in June or later in six of the past
12 years, according to the comptroller’s office, even though Mautino said the
report’s ideal deadline is Dec. 31 each year.
A spokesperson from
Moody’s Investors Service, one of the nation’s leading credit rating agencies,
said Illinois being late in publishing the CAFR is “certainly not positive.”
The report gives
the agency’s analysts detailed information that helps determine what the
state’s credit rating should be. Currently, Moody’s rates Illinois at the
lowest investment-grade rating available.
“I’m not surprised
that this is late,” Rep. Steven Reick, a Republican from Woodstock, said. “It
sounds to me that the cumbersome nature of state agencies renders them
absolutely ineffective in terms of timely reporting of financial results of
those agency operations, and I think that is a tremendous disservice not only
to the taxpayers of Illinois but to the people those agencies are supposed to
serve.”
The four
legislative leaders and budget officials from the governor’s office are each
hand-delivered a copy of the CAFR the morning it is published, the auditor
general added, because it is the most detailed accounting of the state’s
finances.
It has no bearing
on balancing the budget, because a budget is a spending plan based on projected
revenues.
Suggestions from
the office of the auditor general for how to avoid delays in publishing the
document in the future can be found in the audit reports its office releases
regularly, Mautino said.
“Each of our audits contain findings and that’s our
entire existence, is based on fixing things going forward — identifying
problems and suggesting how to fix them,” he said. “Those are suggestions to
the legislators for changes.”
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2019.
