2006-01-AU Audit of the County of Hawai‘i's Recycling and Diversion Grants Program

Home

Chapter 3 DIVERSION GRANT PROGRAM • Contract No. 000317 for the semi - annual period January 1, 2005 to June 30, 2005, was not signed until April 22, 2005. However, documentation attached to invoices shows that work was being performed without an executed contract from January 1, 2005 to April 21, 2005. See above query. 4. Contract copy in DEM program file is incomplete. • The copy of Contract No. 000301 in DEM files is incomplete as to Page 2. Possible issues of legality and enforceability may arise, if the contract is, in fact, incomplete, or a complete copy of the contract cannot be located. 5. DEM estimates of County waste streams and required budgets for diversion are inaccurate. • Supplemental contracts were issued due to the inaccuracy of DEM's initial estimates of volumes to be processed. 6. Guidance on disclosure documentation and reporting requirements relating to "conflict of interest" and "related parties" is insufficient. • The "sale" of commodities by a contractor to a "related party" end -user increases the risk of contractor abuse or fraud, particularly when combined with the lack of verifiable documentation of incoming volumes and sources of commodities. 7. Diversion Grant Program Guidelines do not include sufficient operational controls and reporting procedures. • Grant Guidelines require documentation as to "source" of collected and diverted materials, but do not require "weights by source ". Therefore, documentation provided by contractors is inconsistent and cannot be reconciled. • BSH documents only weights of collections from transfer station sources. • Atlas Recycling does not provide weights by source, and its only documentation as to "source" is typically a handwritten note on the Diversion Grant Claim Form. 8. Diversion Program Grant Guidelines do not include requirements for standardized scale ticket data. • Scale weight tickets reviewed did not routinely include tare weights of trucks. Some tickets included only gross weights of trucks and loads. How tonnage of commodities was determined using only gross weights on scale tickets without an established standard tare weight for each vehicle is unclear. • Scale tickets included handwritten tare weights that could not be verified. How tonnage of commodities was verified using handwritten tare weights is unclear. 23