Purpose

The objective of our examination was to determine whether payments made by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESD) to Trivision Tek Group, Inc. (Trivision) under Grant Disbursement Agreement (GDA) X199 were appropriate.

Background

GDA X199 is a member initiative grant sponsored by former Senate majority leader John Sampson. Trivision was hired to provide consulting services for the Medicaid Data Warehouse under both GDA X199 with ESD and as a subcontractor to Currier McCabe & Associates (CMA) under its contract with the New York State Department of Health (DOH). According to GDA X199, Trivision was not allowed to bill ESD for services that were paid or were payable from other funding sources.

Key Findings

We found ESD approved three vouchers totaling $350,000 payable to Trivision for services previously paid for, or were payable by, CMA and for services never performed. This includes $330,200 for consulting services Trivision performed as a subcontractor to CMA at the New York State Department of Health (DOH) and $19,800 for project management services that were never performed.

As a result of our examination, we rejected the final $211,109 payment request from Trivision to ESD. In addition, ESD terminated GDA X199 recovered the $138,891 it paid under the grant.

Key Recommendations

• Monitor future awards with multiple funding sources to ensure ESD does not pay contractors for services paid or payable from other funding sources.
• Ensure future projects are sufficiently monitored to verify all services are actually performed prior to certifying the appropriateness of payment requests to the Comptroller.