The University of Louisville’s College of Education and Human Development’s financial audit has been completed.

We requested a copy of the audit via an open records request on February 26, 2009. By law, according to the Kentucky Open Records Act, the University had until 3:23 P.M. Eastern yesterday to respond to acknowledge our request. Unfortunately, the University failed to do so. While we’re willing to cut the school some slack re: the departure of the Open Records Officer, there’s no excuse for a state agency that large not to be able to accommodate requests such as ours. Dr. Morison was able to do so at a time when his office was busier than it had been in decades and with ease.

We had to go out of our way to obtain a copy of the audit’s executive summary, which is thankfully available online. (Thanks to an industrious reader for keeping us informed.) Click here (Warning: PDF Link) for that – it begins on page 29 of the document.

Audit Services performed the audit (fiscal years 07/01/2005 – 06/30/2008) of the CEHD at the request of Jim Ramsey and had the following objectives:

• Financial transactions originated by the college are accurate, supported, and legitimate
• Controls over financial transactions are adequate to prevent or identify questionable activity

The summary indicates that the full scope financial review was requested after the Robert Felner debacle came to light. It indicates that the audit isn’t a forensic analysis of Felner’s alleged fraud and no individual items that are part of the federal investigation were part of the review.

Here are the audit’s conclusions:

• Financial transactions originated by the college are accurate, supported, and legitimate with few identified exceptions
• There is OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE the controls over financial transactions that are designed to prevent or identify questionable activity

And more from the document:

Significant issues were also identified relative to institutional procedures and processes. These issues indicated a need for enhanced education and training in contracts, the establishment of enhanced monitoring for compliance with sponsored project regulations, and strong communication between senior business managers and the Vice President for Finance. These issues are being addressed in the University’s response to Cotton and Allen’s report on research processes.

The audit goes on to detail plans of action in the above mentioned areas, some of which we’ll highlight below:

Contracting – Institutional Issue: Accounts payable processes will be enhanced to ensure payments are made on authorized contracts only.

Financial Controls – CEHD will continue to train and monitor procurement card transactions for compliance with policy. Consideration will be made to canceling cards where continued non-compliance is identified. & CEHD will continue to monitor the Planetarium financial results. Although progress has been achieved, financial viability remains a “work in progress”. (Relate note: We’ll have more on the UofL Planetarium in the days and weeks to come.)

Sponsored Project Compliance – Institutional issue: Develop a central process to monitor research projects for compliance.

and our favorite – Security over Sensitive Information – Private individual information will be kept in a secured location at all times.

And there you have it. Nothing to see here, move along. Everything is puppies and rainbows at CEHD.

Let’s hear it for what appears to be a major lack of transparency. While these recommendations are great – what the heck? Weren’t all of these recommended practices in place years ago? And what’s with the lack of willingness to address what really went down? We can’t wait to get our hands on the nuts and bolts of the audit itself. If the University ever responds to our Open Records Request, as required by law, which it has already failed to do. And maybe we’ll finally receive in the mail documents promised from a request nearly three weeks ago, as well.