• This page, Audit of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources—Green Communities Division, is   offered by
  • Office of the State Auditor
Audit

Audit  Audit of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources—Green Communities Division

This audit examined whether the Green Communities Division ensured that municipalities applying for green community designation met all of the required criteria, submitted their required annual reports, grant funding distributed through DOER’s Green Communities Designation and Grant Program was used for its intended purposes. The audit examined the period of July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2020.

Organization: Office of the State Auditor
Date published: November 10, 2021

Executive Summary

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of the Department of Energy Resources’ (DOER’s) Green Communities Division (GCD) for the period July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2020. In this performance audit, we determined whether GCD ensured that municipalities applying for green community designation met all of the required criteria, whether municipalities that were designated as green communities submitted their required annual reports, and whether grant funding distributed through DOER’s Green Communities Designation and Grant Program was used for its intended purposes.

Below is a summary of our findings and recommendations, with links to each page listed.

Finding 1
 

GCD did not ensure that all green communities submitted their required annual reports.

Recommendation
 

GCD should establish monitoring controls over its green communities’ reporting process that will allow it to identify green communities that have not submitted their required annual reports in a timely manner and prompt them to do so.

Finding 2
 

GCD did not ensure that green communities documented the need for $46,471 of designation grant fund expenditures.

Recommendation
 

GCD should establish monitoring controls over the use of Green Communities Designation and Grant Program funding to ensure that funds used by grantees to pay for administrative expenses are properly documented.

 

A PDF copy of the Audit of the Department of Energy Resources - Green Communities Division is available here.

 

Downloads

Contact

Phone

Fax

(617) 727-3014

Address

Massachusetts State House
Room 230
Boston, MA 02133

Help Us Improve Mass.gov  with your feedback

Please do not include personal or contact information.
Feedback