AOT CFO walks committee through the Agency’s ‘Black Book,’ highlights diesel, benefits and procurement fees

Candace Umkoz, chief financial officer for the Agency of Transportation (AOT), briefed lawmakers on the agency’s Black Book and explained how the Vantage budget reports map to Budget Bill sections and account codes.

The Black Book: Umkoz told the joint committee that the Black Book is AOT’s response to administration requests for Vantage reports and that its sections map to the budget bill’s appropriation sections (for example, B900). She explained the structure lawmakers will see in each section: roll-up summaries by the three major budget objects (personal services, operating expenses and grants), a detailed account-code listing, position summaries and inventories for federal receipts, grants and interdepartmental transfers.

Selected figures and program details: Umkoz highlighted some agency-wide and program-line numbers during the presentation. She said the agency’s central-garage diesel spending appeared as roughly $2,000,000 in 2024 on the agency-wide extract and noted that the Black Book account coding can split similar functions across multiple account codes. She told members the state-wide purchasing- and merchant-card program produced roughly $5,700,000 in fees in 2024 related to accepting credit/debit payments (for example, online payments and vendor card transactions).

On personnel and benefits, Umkoz explained that the position summary report pulls position and salary data from the state HR system and a forecasting module and that budgeted positions are initially shown as charged to the transportation fund with downstream reimbursements for federally reimbursable work. She said some of the year-to-year increases reflected collective-bargaining-driven salary changes and higher insurance and retirement amounts; Umkoz noted that vacancy turnover savings do not appear in actuals the same way they are budgeted and that accounting for vacancy savings helps explain some of the difference between actuals and proposed budgets.

Account coding and transparency: Committee members asked whether web advertising is being captured separately; Umkoz said some web invoices likely hit a general advertising account code historically used by AOT and the Black Book may not always expose the line-item detail without extra accounting work. She invited members to request extracts because the agency maintains account-code-level detail and can produce targeted breakdowns when required.

Planned changes and data limits: Umkoz said the state’s Workday ERP transition offers an opportunity to revisit the statewide chart of accounts and to propose changes that would make AOT’s reporting align better with agency needs. She also described inventories the Black Book contains (federal receipts by Assistance Listing Number, grant inventories, interdepartmental transfers) and said some items — for example, certain flood-related emergency match receipts — appear as expected receipts from other state agencies.

Where the committee goes next: Members asked for follow-up detail; Umkoz said staff can provide extracts on request and that legislators’ questions that take modest work can typically be answered quickly, while some requests would require more staff time. Chair remarks closed the session by noting a series of follow-up hearings and updates on the agency’s long-term calendar.

Ending: The committee scheduled follow-up accountability sessions and invited the agency back for more detail; lawmakers flagged items they want additional reporting on including advertising coding, federal reimbursement details and vacancy savings.