The Legislative Audit and Fiscal Review Committee heard Aug. 14 that the North Dakota statewide single audit for the 2023–24 biennium identified $75.6 million in questioned federal costs and 24 audit findings, with most of the questioned costs tied to coronavirus-era infrastructure expenditures.

The State Auditor’s Office presented the single-audit results for federal spending of about $6.8 billion over the two‑year period; Lindsey Slappy, director of quality assurance, told the committee the audit covered nine state agencies and the university system.

Why it matters: question costs are federal-program expenditures the auditors concluded may be unallowable or unsupported; the single-audit determination can require agencies to return federal funds or change program management to comply with federal requirements.

Details: "We identified $75,600,000 in question costs," Slappy said during the meeting. The single audit produced 24 findings distributed across multiple agencies; Health and Human Services carried nine of those findings and the university system five. The largest portion of questioned costs — about $75.3 million — related to the American Rescue Plan/Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, where the auditors found procurement, reporting and allowable‑use problems. Other issues cited included subrecipient monitoring and documentation shortfalls.

The affected programs included federal recovery and disaster grants and certain research and development clusters. For several programs material noncompliance required a qualified opinion on those specific federal programs even though the overall state financial statements received an unqualified (clean) audit opinion.

What agencies said: the audit report notes the agencies and campuses agreed with the findings and included corrective actions in the management’s response section of the single-audit report.

Next steps: the auditor’s office provided the committee with the single-audit documentation and said the agencies had agreed to corrective action plans; lawmakers said they would monitor implementation and may request follow-up reviews where corrective steps are incomplete.