News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
An audit conducted by the Tennessee Department of Transportation has revealed over $130,000 in questionable grant spending by the UCHRA.
According to an independent auditor’s report, the UCHRA used TDOT grant funding for nutrition program salaries, agency vehicle maintenance, and travel expense reimbursement.
Interim Executive Director Mark Farley said the agency will work with state officials to look into reducing the amount owed.
“This is the first opportunity we’ve had to look at everything,” Farley said. “We’ll respond back with some documentation of our own, and hopefully we can reduce the amount we’ll have to pay. Obviously we will have to pay back a sizable amount of money based on our initial looks at the report.”
Farley said the possibility of paying back the full amount to TDOT would be a “hard burden” on the agency.
“Hopefully we can work with them and spread that out over a period of time and make those reimbursements,” Farley said. “If we were required to do all that upfront immediately, that’s going to deplete all of our assets [and] all of our reserves that we have.”
According to the audit, nearly $84,000 of the questionable expenses billed to transportation grants came from nutrition program, human resources, and other employees not included in the UCHRA’s approved allocation plan.
The expenses in question occurred under Former Executive Director Luke Collins, who was terminated after allegations of mishandling and improper use of agency funds.
Farley said some employees – specifically those within the nutrition program – oversee multiple aspects of the agency and that they will try to reduce their portion of the expenses.
” They oversaw the county offices that we have in all 14 counties,” Farley said. “So that is some of the areas we’ll look at it and we’ll discuss with [TDOT], was that completely unallowable or were there some areas… that person was doing that was allowable, to capture some of that cost.”
Farley said the agency will look into how it can better manage its funds in the future as they look to work with TDOT to reduce the cost.
