Audit at Texas Health and Human Services Commission finds latest in long line of problems
AUSTIN — Texas’ sprawling bureaucracy for regulating health care and providing social services is vulnerable to a “perception of impropriety” because it routinely lets individual contracting personnel open bids on their own, without any witnesses, a new internal audit says.
The Health and Human Services system also unwisely allows program managers and division leaders who control billions of dollars of spending to ask for the same contracting specialist every time, the audit said. That potentially creates a coziness that could harm taxpayers’ interests, it said.
Problems highlighted in the audit, which was released to state GOP leaders last week, are the latest in a long line of problems at the Health and Human Services Commission.
Six officials have stepped down since early April, when Gov. Greg Abbott called revelations of sloppiness and mistakes in scoring of bids “unacceptable.” At the time, Abbott, who is up for re-election, noted that there had not been any suggestion of "malfeasance," such as purposeful preferences for some bidders over others.
Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/07/17/audit-texas-health-human-services-commission-finds-latest-long-line-problems
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