Bartlesville Radio: The area’s best source for news, weather and sports!

The Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector's Office has released its audit of the Oklahoma State Department of Health on Wednesday. The audit spanned from September 1^st, 2019 to February 28^th, 2021 and reviewed expenditures at the department during that time span. The report is divided into three sections and that is examined below:

The first part talks about the 5.4 million dollars that the State of Oklahoma paid for Personal Protective Equipment, but has not been received. The audit said in part that the OSDH did not have a comprehensive emergency procurement policy or procedure in place prior to the COVID-19 emergency, greatly increasing the state's risk for fraud, waste and loss of funds.

The second section deals with Oklahoma's purchasing laws and the purchasing process. In this portion of the audit, they report that OSDH experienced numerous personnel changes within both the administrative and financial divisions during the audit period. It goes on to say that because of the significant changes, it is possible some individuals may have been unfamiliar with the purchasing laws.

The final part of the audit examined salaries, especially the one of former OSDH Commissioner Gary Cox, whose salary was raised from $215,000 to just over $335,000 on January 1^st, 2021. This salary exceeded the State's maximum salary allowance of $322,782.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt recently released the following statement regarding the audit:

“To keep hospitals open and our frontline workers safe, I issued executive orders to get PPE to our state as quickly as possible. Looking back today, we can acknowledge that there were technical errors while still knowing we did everything we could to protect citizens of this state during an unimaginable time.”