State legislators are reviewing the independent audits of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development released earlier Thursday. The two audits reveal no further misconduct than what was revealed during an audit by Attorney General Marty Jackley. Governor Dennis Daugaard asked Jackley to look into allegations of improper conduct by a former economic development official. Senator Deb Peters says she’s still sifting through the hundreds of pages of the two reports, but says she’s not surprised they didn’t reveal any more misconduct.
"The reports came back pretty much as I expected, there weren’t any major surprises. They did a lot of internal control reviews, I’ve done a few of those in my day. It’s the same stuff you see no matter what kind of business you’re in, whether it’s the GOED programming or if you’re in a private business, a lot of folks have the same types of issues. Anytime you have human weakness you try to compensate for putting in some type of internal control. Those processes are being corrected, or have been corrected, and the reports have outlined what we’ve done and what we haven’t done,” Peters says.
The two reviews look at procedures of the Future Fund and two other economic development programs, and an internal controls examination of GOED. The third review is being conducted by the Department of Legislative Audit—those results are expected in the next few weeks.