What a Leading State Auditor Says About Fraud, Government Misspending and Building Public Trust – By McKenzie Funk (ProPublica) / June 14, 2024
We spoke to a leading state auditor about how remote work and artificial intelligence are ushering in new kinds of fraud in state and local governments.
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When the COVID-19 pandemic upended the workplace, jobs went remote, offices had to adopt new technologies and longtime employees suddenly departed. Federal stimulus dollars flooded into state and local government accounts, and fraudsters had a heyday.
The pandemic was only one of several recent disruptions to roil the financial operations of state and local governments, which oversee $4 trillion a year in spending. Payments — and paper trails — have gone digital. Scammers can now use AI tools to streamline their hunt for victims, including within government agencies. And local newspapers in the United States, one historic line of defense against graft, are disappearing at a rate of 2.5 a week.
Few states have a better view into the latest ways people are stealing and otherwise misspending local government dollars than Washington.
Its Office of the State Auditor is the second-biggest state auditing shop in the country by budget ($64 million) and fifth by employee count (400). By state statute, the office must regularly examine the books and operations of Washington’s every town, county, port, stadium authority, asparagus commission, cemetery district, drainage district and mosquito control district. It conducts as many as 2,400 state and local audits a year, rooting out fraud and waste.
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