Reports

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in upheaval to the economy and government services. Ulster County needed to address the questions of people and organizations during the pandemic as it related to public health concerns. To address public questions and concerns, Ulster County established a COVID hotline. Despite allocating significant resources to promotion and widening the scope of the Service Center, it still receives few calls. The call volume does not seem to align with the staffing and additional resources being allocated to operate a separate unit of government. This downtime could...

Our audit sought to determine if unemployment claims filed in the name of Ulster County employees were handled in accordance with current law and Ulster County policy. Our audit revealed that the Personnel Department properly identified fraudulent unemployment claims and challenged those claims. In addition, the Personnel Department staff appropriately notified the Sheriff’s Department and the Information Systems Department about the potential unemployment insurance fraud. However, it appears that some employees may not have been notified by the Personnel Department that they were the victims...

The objective of this audit is to determine whether cardholders used the Government Purchase Card to support DoD's response to the pandemic in accordance with Federal and DoD policies. We may revise the objective as the audit proceeds, and we will also consider suggestions from management for additional or revised objectives.

The objective of this audit is to determine whether the Military Departments are processing exemption requests for the Coronavirus Disease–2019 vaccination and taking disciplinary actions for active duty Service members in accordance with Federal and DoD guidance. 

This report is a summary of the costs related to responding to the pandemic that the Ulster County Comptroller’s Office was able to aggregate from existing reported financial and personnel data for 2020. The County continues to incur substantial costs in the current year 2021, many of which are offset by pandemic related revenue streams, such as the cost of operating vaccination clinics. We have reviewed the 2020 expenditures to assist in both improving the accounting for these costs and potentially identifying and obtaining revenues to offset these costs.

We are conducting the subject audit at the request of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The objective of this audit is to determine the actions taken by the DoD to configure remote access software used to facilitate telework during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect DoD networks and systems from potential malicious activity. We will also determine the extent to which the DoD implemented security controls to protect remote connections to its networks. We may revise the objective as the audit proceeds, and we will consider suggestions from management for additional or revised objectives.

The objective of this audit is to determine whether DoD’s deployment of collaboration tools used to facilitate telework during the coronavirus disease–2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exposed DoD networks and systems to potential malicious activity, and the extent to which the DoD implemented security controls to protect the collaboration tools used on its networks. We will perform this audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We may revise the objective as the audit proceeds, and we will consider suggestions from DoD management for additional or revised objectives.

The Comptroller’s Office surveyed Ulster residents on potential uses of the American Rescue Plan funds. The survey was promoted on social media from March 24 through May 3, 2021, and in electronic newsletters to the Comptroller’s Office distribution lists. Two hundred and twelve people responded. Respondents were provided with 14 potential options for the use of funds and asked to grade each on a score of 1 to 10.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) awarded nearly $2 billion in supplemental grant funding to 1,387 health centers nationwide in fiscal year (FY) 2020 to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency. The funding was intended to support the health centers' activities related to the detection, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19, including maintaining or increasing health center capacity and staffing levels during the pandemic, and expanding COVID-19 testing. The performance period for each of these one-time supplemental grant awards, which HRSA began awarding in March 2020, is 12 months. Health centers were permitted to charge to their awards pre-award costs in order to support expenses related to the COVID-19 public health emergency dating back to January 20, 2020. We will determine whether health centers used their HRSA COVID-19 supplemental grant funding in accordance with Federal requirements and grant terms.

Identifying patients who are at-risk of overdose or abuse is key to addressing this crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this need even more pressing. The National Institutes of Health recently warned that individuals with opioiduse disorder could be particularly hard hit by COVID-19, which is a respiratory virus that attacks the lungs. Respiratory disease is known to increase mortality risks among people taking opioids. This data brief would provide information on opioid utilization among beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Part D in 2020.