By a vote of 6-2 last night the CMS board shot down an attempt to find out just how solid the system’s free-and-reduction lunch program might be. That left board member Larry Gauvreau vowing to go straight to the USDA’s inspector general to try to sniff out any fraud in the federal program that provides CMS $30m. a year.
Both the state Department of Public Instruction and USDA compliance attorneys have claimed that any further CMS attempt to audit its FRL program would result in the loss of federal funds for “over-verifying” — bureaucrat speak for trying to make sure transfer payments actually go to the needy.
Most interesting was board member Trent Merchant’s position that while it is important that CMS have solid FRL metrics because so much system spendings is set by those numbers, he could not risk losing the federal support even for short time and so Merchant voted against the audit. Fair enough.
But if he is really worried bogus FRL numbers misallocate CMS resources, Merchant should support Gauvreau’s attempt to end-run the bureaucrats by bringing in the IG.
