Thanks to the Star-Advertiser’s Nanez Kalani for calling attention to the audit of University of Hawai‘i travel practices (“UH must rein in travel practices, auditor says”).
The auditor’s report is attached to the Board of Regents agenda for an October 5 committee meeting.
The Star-Advertiser story highlights the problems with delayed reimbursements of excess travel advances, and also puts the spotlight on a small number of university employees with multiple trips costing tens of thousands of dollars.
My impression is that this particular audit raises more questions than it answers about overall travel policies and benefits within the university system.
Being married to a longtime UH employee and professor, I’ve heard my share of travel stores.
Based on those, I would suspect these particular problems do not affect the large majority of faculty. Why? Faculty generally don’t get travel advances. They normally have to put up their own money and then, much later, receive travel reimbursements. And I would be interested in hearing from faculty as to whether the claim that reimbursements are processed within an average of 5 days after completion of travel rings at all true.
The audit reports the average travel advance was $13,800. To most faculty, I’m sure that looks like a misprint. Very few qualify for travel support, much less advances, at that level. But, unfortunately, the lack of details in the audit report make is sound like this is the world of faculty travel.
And most faculty are not able to receive multiple trips at UH expense, or to exceed normal limits for UH travel support, which generally is limited to just a few thousand dollars total, including air fares and per diem.
My guess is that many of these problems are limited to administrators or a very few faculty in rather unusual positions.
The audit report lists the top ten non-athletic employees who took between six and 59 trips each during the 2016-2017 fiscal year, costing from $36,000 to nearly $87,000 per person. Two of the ten are described as UH Manoa professors.
Unfortunately, neither the auditor’s report itself nor Kalani’s story reveal how those travel funds are allocated between normal faculty travel and administrative travel.
It also isn’t clear whether the travel covered by this report included administrative travel paid from all sources of funds, including by so-called protocol accounts controlled by certain administrators and processed through the UH Foundation.
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Also affiliated with UH faculty and, yes, this audit was very strange — the “average” numbers cited are all way above our experience except for the 5 days needed to receive reimbursements. Don’t think that’s ever happened although the electronic submittal system has made things faster.
While the audit team obviously can’t identify the subjects by name, it would help if they provided category details (e.g., administrator, institute director, full prof, assistant prof). This would probably be much more enlightening. As it is, the audit report is just bizarre.