Columbus – Last week the Ohio General Assembly passed legislation that allows the Ohio Auditor of State’s office to conduct performance audits of state institutions of high education at the discretion of Auditor of State, Keith Faber.

“I commend the Legislature, President Obhof, Speaker Householder, and the bill sponsors Senator Rulli and McColley, for continuing efforts to make higher ed affordable and attainable for Ohio’s students,” Auditor Faber said. “By removing the cap on higher education performance audits, it will certainly allow us to find efficiencies across the state that benefit students and ultimately our workforce in Ohio.”

Before the General Assembly passed this legislation, the Auditor could only do a performance audit on one state college or university every two years. At that rate, it would have taken 72 years to audit all 36 of Ohio’s public institutions of higher education. Now, with the cap removed, the Auditor’s office has increased authority to use performance audits to find inefficiencies in a school’s operations that could translate into cost savings for Ohio’s students and taxpayers.

In October of 2018, the Auditor of State’s office issued their first performance audit of The Ohio State University. With a scope limited to their IT services and print management, the report identified $6.4 million in savings. Findings of this amount indicate that increasing the number of performance audits conducted each biennium will save a significant amount of taxpayer dollars.

A full copy of this legislation is available online.

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The Auditor of State’s office, one of five independently elected statewide offices in Ohio is responsible for auditing more than 6,000 state and local government agencies. Under the direction of Auditor Keith Faber, the office also provides financial services to local governments, investigates and prevents fraud in public agencies, and promotes transparency in government.

Contact:

Allie Dumski

Press Secretary

(614) 644-1111