State Auditor General Timothy DeFoor on Thursday visited with Carbon County officials to talk about ways he has transformed his office and share successes that may translate to the county level.

DeFoor, who served as controller for Dauphin County, said he wanted to look at how the auditor general’s office functioned and ways to improve the work produced, as well to provide employees with the tools they needed.

“Are the audits being read in a way that the average person ... can understand and get the gist of what was being audited?” he said.

DeFoor also looked at the workforce, which suffered losses because of many older employees leaving amid the pandemic, and how to develop that workforce and provide opportunities to advance.

The auditor general’s office wasn’t the only office with fewer employees following the pandemic - other state departments also had trouble retaining and hiring employees, DeFoor said.

“That happened everywhere,” he said. “We couldn’t hire enough people to replace the employees that were leaving, in addition to hire additional employees that we needed.”

DeFoor’s workforce development team then reached out to the 14 state universities as well as state-related schools, and came up with the Intern to Hire Program, which gives qualifying students a job following the internship, he said.

“That program became so successful that we had almost as many students apply for internships with us than we actually have employees,” he said.

DeFoor then asked Carbon County Controller Mark Sverchek if the county had issues with recruitment and bringing in younger talent. Carbon County has lost many senior people, he replied, and also loses employees to neighboring counties that pay more.

Other counties, such as Centre, are looking at starting similar recruitment programs, DeFoor said.

“We just feel that’s just a great way to deal with the staffing problems and also a way to introduce students to government accounting,” he said.

DeFoor also looked at the some 3,500 audits his department does each year, and found ways to be more efficient and strategic in performing them. The results of the pilot program will be announced at the year’s end, he said.

The department also shifted away from a position of calling people out for findings, or problem areas in an audit, because it’s not helpful, DeFoor said.

“So, in a very simplistic way, we identify the findings, if any, and a very common-sense approach to fix the problem,” he said. “We stopped playing the ‘gotcha’ game, because audits are tools. They’re there to help government.”

“When we do an audit, we say we’re here to help you,” DeFoor said, adding that it’s opening a dialogue to correct problems, and his office has received words of thanks following some audits.

One of DeFoor’s passion projects is advocating that financial literacy be taught in every school in the state, just as he was taught life skills such as home economics and shop in school.

“We need to prepare our children who are graduating from high school as much as we possibly can,” he said. “No matter what you do in your life, you’re going to have to somehow learn how to understand and budget money.”

Also attending the meeting with DeFoor were Commissioner Wayne Nothstein, accounting manager Joseph Zelienka and Hayden Rigo, DeFoor’s deputy chief of staff.