Review of Colorado's Monitoring of Community Services Block Grants

The Colorado Department of Local Affairs (State agency) did not establish adequate internal controls for assessing and monitoring eligible entities provided with Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). Specifically, the State agency did not conduct full onsite reviews at all eligible entities within a 3-year period, ensure that CSBG funds were used to provide services only to eligible clients, conduct initial Recovery Act onsite reviews at each eligible entity that received Recovery Act funding, adequately document Recovery Act onsite reviews, ensure that risk assessments performed by eligible entities were accurate before they were submitted to ACF, and accurately report Recovery Act accomplishments. These deficiencies occurred because the State agency lacked written policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the provisions of the CSBG Act and the Recovery Act.

We recommended that the State agency (1) establish and implement written policies and procedures for the conduct of full onsite reviews at its eligible entities in a timely manner, ensure through these reviews that subgrantees have income eligibility validation controls in place, and properly document the results of these reviews; and (2) correct inaccurately compiled and reported Recovery Act information and work with the Administration for Children and Families to correct errors from reporting periods for which the State agency no longer has the ability to change independently on the Recovery.gov website. The State agency agreed with our recommendations and described corrective actions that it had implemented or planned to implement.