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Audit Objective

Determine whether officials appropriately evaluated projects prior to approval and subsequently monitored the performance of businesses that received financial benefits.

Key Findings

JCIDA officials did not appropriately evaluate all projects prior to approval or monitor the performance of businesses that received financial benefits. Officials did not:

• Verify an applicant’s project information or complete adequate cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) for proposed projects before approving them.
• Charge some project applicants fees in accordance with the Board-approved fee schedule.
• Assess annually reported capital investment and salary information for reliability or compare it to estimates in project applications.

Key Recommendations

The Board should:

• Ensure CBAs adequately compare project costs to benefits and are completed before projects are approved.
• Adopt policies and procedures to ensure application and administration fees are properly calculated and billed.
• Develop procedures to ensure annually reported project performance information is supported by adequate documentation, provided to the Board for evaluation and compared to project goals as stated in applications.

JCIDA officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they planned to initiate corrective action. Appendix B includes our comments on issues raised in the IDA’s response letter.