REMARKS
Plans to expedite the audit process and manage backlog
2:29:44
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109 sec
Paul Seamus Ryan outlines the Campaign Finance Board's plans to expedite the audit process and manage the backlog of unfinished audits from previous election cycles.
- The board is implementing stricter limits on extensions for audit responses
- They are working on a 'backlog burn down' plan, focusing on completing 2021 audits while ensuring 2023 audits don't impact the 2025 goals
- New strategies include assigning teams to specific election years and adjusting work planning to allow continuous progress on backlog audits
Paul Seamus Ryan
2:29:44
There's, you know, a few facets to the plan.
2:29:47
1 was reining in the extensions policy.
2:29:49
1 of the and I've mentioned what the policy is going forward, max 6 weeks extensions.
2:29:54
The problem is that we can't apply those new strict limits to campaigns in 2023 or 2021 because some campaigns have gone through the audit process, gotten all the extensions they wanted.
2:30:06
There would an equity issue and potentially a legal challenge to us, if we were to superimpose those limits.
2:30:13
But lacking the ability to put this new 6 week limit, we have reinstated, a more generous limit policy on audits and enforcement actions in the spring, so unlimited extensions are over.
2:30:28
We're reining all of this back in.
2:30:30
We are working on a more concrete plan, what we call it, a backlog, backlog burn down for 2021 in particular, although those cases those audits are far enough along that, we're now really focused on 2023 as well and making sure we move through 2023 quickly enough that it doesn't impact our ability to reach our 2025 goal.
2:30:52
That's the challenge that we're working with.
2:30:55
Right.
2:30:55
We're gonna be trying a couple different things.
2:30:57
We're going to be, for example, assigning teams to specific years to complete the audits and not diverting them, for example, in this moment, typically, the auditors would be scrutinizing all the information that came in by November 22nd to determine payment eligibility for December 16th.
2:31:14
Huge task, short time frame, and the way we've done work planning within our audit team historically has been put all of the auditors or almost all the auditors on the urgent time limited task.
2:31:24
We're we're trying to figure out a better, different approach that will allow us to continue working through some of this backlog instead of start, stop, start, stop on the backlog audits.
