“I’d entertain a proposal to allow the UIA to keep a portion of the money they recoup from ineligible recipients to help deal with staffing shortages,” Kunse said. “But that would require them to try and recoup some of the money first, and they’ve apparently given up on that. At this point the agency has lost every inkling of the public’s trust. No sane person would turn around and throw more money at an agency that just lost nearly 10 billion dollars.”

“I’m curious to know what Michigan Democrats think the auditor general should have done differently in this situation,” said Kunse, R-Clare. “Are they proposing he should have ignored a request from an elected official representing 90,000 people? The auditor general has the job he does because he is the state’s trusted expert in conducting internal reviews of government agencies. When we have a question about finance, we call treasury. When we have a question about roads, we call transportation. If not the auditor general, who else would lawmakers reach out to when ensuring the accuracy of their audit requests?”