(Office of the Governor) — Gov. Arnold Palacios and Lt. Gov. David Apatang commended the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation for resolving long-standing audit findings from a federal monitoring review held back in 2019.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services-Rehabilitative Services Administration informed the CNMI’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation that OVR, Office of the Governor, has fully addressed all findings from a Federal Monitoring Review conducted in 2019.
The RSA’s VR program specialist, Michele Mulhern, in an email stated, “As this is the case, the Corrective Action Plan has been successfully completed.”
“Accountability and compliance to federal grant requirements are important to ensure we continue to provide important community services that are funded by these funding sources,” said Governor Palacios. “We commend and recognize the OVR staff’s diligence/efforts in resolving issues that have been pending since 2019. We recognize there’s more work to do, but this is an important milestone.”
On August 29, 2020, RSA issued a monitoring report on the CNMI’s Vocational Rehabilitation and Supported Employment program concluding that “OVR does not maintain effective internal controls over the federal award that provide reasonable assurances that the non-federal entity is managing its award in compliance with federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the award.”
The report further stated, “While these control deficiencies suggest elevated risk to OVR’s effectiveness and efficiency of operations, reliability of reporting, and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, the risk will be greatly reduced through management’s development of internal controls at a level of detail necessary to address the complexity of its systems.”
OVR Director Jim Rayphand said, “This was a matter of aligning the language of our internal controls and operational practices with expectations of our grantors to ensure that we stay true to intended purpose of and properly administer the grant programs under our care.”
“Much of the corrected actions were already in place even before I came on board thanks to all of our staff, but namely our Fiscal Officer and former Case Services Manager,” Rayphand added. “We worked together on the final stretch to resolve the findings.”
