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State Auditor asks Senate to cut $236,000 analytics item, outlines three-year plan to audit remaining school systems
Summary
State Auditor Greg Griffin asked the Senate to remove a $236,000 line-item for data-analytics subscriptions from the FY26 amended budget and outlined a phased, three-year plan beginning FY27 to expand audit coverage from about two-thirds to include roughly 50 currently unaudited public school systems, prioritizing 12 moderate- and high-risk districts.
State Auditor Greg Griffin told the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations that the Department of Audits and Accounts does not need a $236,000 recurring data-analytics subscription in the amended FY26 budget because one-time funds are available to cover those costs in FY26 and recurring costs can be handled in the FY27 request. “We are requesting that the Senate remove the $236,000 item on line 8.1 related to our data analytics subscription costs,” Griffin said.
Griffin also described a statutory responsibility to audit public school systems and a proposed phased, three-year ramp to expand audit coverage beginning in FY27. He said the department currently audits roughly two-thirds of school systems and that about 50 systems are not audited by the department now. The department expects to prioritize the more risky districts first, noting “there are about 12 of those that we do not currently audit.”
Committee members pressed Griffin on how risk is defined and who enforces timeliness. Griffin said risk reflects factors such as the number and severity of audit findings and whether a district is behind in completing audits. On enforcement he said the department cannot force school boards to produce audits under current law and that proposed legislation would define “audit readiness” and could make pervasive failure to be audit-ready the basis for a finding.
The chair and other members asked for follow-up details about which districts are delinquent and how many audit years they are behind; Griffin offered to provide specific names and the number of years late via the department’s public dashboard.
Next steps: Griffin requested the Senate remove the FY26 subscription line and said the department would return with a FY27 plan that includes staff and cost estimates to implement the three-year expansion.
