Ohio Auditor of State Dave Yost was the keynote speaker at the Richland Area Chamber Legislative Luncheon on Tuesday morning at Ed Pickens’ Café.
Yost began his presentation explaining how his office operates. He explained that the Auditor of State’s office reviews the financial statements of 5,700 public entities “that get your tax dollars,” he noted. Additionally, the office works to track down those who “misspend, misappropriate, or just outright steal your money.” One of the last responsibilities he mentioned is the performance audits.
Expounding upon the performance audits, Yost referenced “Lean Six Sigma”—a managerial tool that results in the elimination of seven kinds of wastes. “We use the Lean Six Sigma in the government sector to look at the processes of government and figure out how to do it better, faster, cheaper and how to reduce variation in the outcome. These are the same kinds of things you do on the floor of a manufacturing plant,” he stated.
Continuing he added, “I’m pleased to report that our performance audits over the last two years reduced findings for savings of over $100 million at state and local government.”
Conducting the performance audits is relatively new, he said, “When I came into office, we didn’t have any authority to do audits of the state government.”
Now, however, the office has been authorized to audit four state agencies a year. One of those agencies he highlighted was the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). Regarding ODOT, he explained, “What we found is that 45 percent of the heavy capital equipment was used less than five percent of the time. So we told them that they ought to get rid of it because it’s costing them $860,000 to maintain the equipment that is not used. And not only that, but they could sell it.”
“Another thing we found blew my mind,” he continued. Yost described a situation in which the office performed an audit on school attendance. He stated that under Ohio law, it is illegal for the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) to have a record of the names of students in the schools it is funding. Instead, there is a data warehouse that issues SSID numbers, which are identifiers for each student, he said.
“One of the troubles is that some kids have more than one SSID number. We have a very mobile society with lots of people moving during a school year, so how are we going to effectively track those kids?” he questioned.
Yost followed up by stating, “We need to change this law. We’re spending three quarters of a million dollars a year on the data warehouse. Forty-eight states in the union managed to not compromise their student’s privacy and let the department of education in their state know the names of the students, and we need to do the same thing.”
Concluding his presentation, Yost said, “Those are the kinds of the things you probably didn’t know that your Auditor of State is involved in, but it’s all really key if our interest is to reduce the footprint of government without harming services. The way to do that is to use the same tools that businesses use to lower their costs or contain their costs, while producing the same or better product.”
Yost then opened the floor for any questions that attendees had.
One of the inquiries was prompted by Kevin Nestor, President of the Richland Area Chamber of Commerce. He asked Yost to give examples of government entities that have done an excellent job of consolidating and saving local taxpayers money, while at the same time providing good or better services.
Yost responded, “There’s a group of mayors in a small town on the west side of Cleveland that have done a very good job at this. They’re sharing dispatching, police training, a variety of things. There’s also a school district that’s sharing a superintendent with another, and there are a couple schools that share a treasurer.”
Auditor of State Dave Yost is Ohio’s thirty-second Auditor of State. He is a “life-long Republican,” who aims at cultivating a “skinnier, smarter government.” He earned his undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University and law degree from Capital University. Yost worked as a Columbus Citizen Journal reporter and then moved into public service in Delaware County, where he served as County Auditor and Prosecutor. Auditor Yost and his wife, Darlene, reside in Delaware County. They have three adult children and two grandchildren.
