California Department of Corrections just finished another two day firesale on travel claims. Only July 22 and 23, any travel reimbursement claim with a value of $500 or less was approved with no documentation (ie receipts). The money was yours for being in the work queue.
You may be asking why? So I will explain. You see, in this era of computers and automated processes; it’s just too difficult to figure-out how many claims in the system are being carried on the books from one fiscal year to the next. To keep it simple, management decided that anything under $500 had to go. This was their way of cleaning up the books. To ease the feeling of lack of GAAP, the mantra of “we will conduct a post-audit as receipts come in” was once again invoked. The dirty little secret is that there is no way to track claims for a post-audit. When this has been invoked in the past, it simply means ignore it and resume business as usual the next day.
Monday, July 26th is the actual date when the carry-over number will be calculated. However, there are no plans of allowing claims for the new fiscal year to be approved for payment until the budget is passed. So what the travel office plans to do for the next few months is sketchy at this point.
Oh, yes! Your State government is still hiring employees in the midst of the $19 billion deficit.