New Jersey’s State Auditor’s office is close to publishing its long-awaited report on the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. The report, initially due to be published in the summer, was set back by delays in obtaining information from CRDA, as well as by personnel changes at the auditor’s office, Assistant State Auditor John Termyna said.
“It took considerably longer than I had originally anticipated,” he said, adding, “I was thinking that we would issue it in the summertime.”
“It is in its final stages and should be issued very soon,” Termyna said. There is no publication date set, however. A CRDA spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There were delays on both sides, Termyna said. The scale of the audit expanded once the state officials visited CRDA, which had not previously in its history been audited by the state. “There were so many (things) that we needed to look into,” he said. “We had some stumbling blocks in getting the information from the agency and that put us back quite a bit, but after we worked through those problems we ended up getting everything we needed in order to write a good report.”
The audit took so long that there were also retirements and personnel changes at the state auditor’s office that affected work on the report, Termyna said.
The State Auditor’s office sits within the Office of Legislative Services. It is not clear why the CRDA audit began last year. The office tries to audit agencies and authorities on a five-year cycle. It mostly sets its own timetable for audits, although in rare instances it may respond to a legislative request to perform an audit.
A chunk of CRDA’s funding has been diverted to cash-strapped Atlantic City. CRDA earlier this year said it would cut staff headcount to reduce its costs, but it also began paying four of its directors a monthly stipend and gave double-digit raises to other employees.
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