2NEWS investigation: Uncovering government waste

Think big. Dozens of state agencies, with thousands of items including desks, tables, chairs, file cabinets, antiques and more. Some of the items are tucked away in a 54,000 square foot warehouse in Oklahoma City. Other items are stored in units across the state. For agencies that are reorganizing or just need a place to store things, the warehouse works pretty well.

Each state department is required to track all of its inventory that costs more than $2,500. Then the agency sends the list to the Department of Central Services, which oversees it.

"The collection of data is certainly centralized, but it's up to each individual agency to fill out the survey reports and send it into us and they do by and large," said John Morrison, administrator of the Department of Central Services.

Centralized isn't the word Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie, would use.

"Over there they should have an office, it's a cubical, and they should have a bunch of files where every year these big inventory items come in and they just put them on file," said Murphey.

In fact, even when we asked the administrator of DCS if he could tell us what's on the centralized list Morrison said, "Yes, there is a listing, but how information, it, can be retrieved right now, I'm quite frankly, not sure."

"It's probably a truthful statement. He probably doesn't know," said State Auditor Gary Jones.

So when we asked DCS what it does with its inventory lists Morrison said, "I am not familiar enough with that aspect."

Not familiar with how items are tracked, meaning thousands of items worth millions of dollars may not even be known about.

"There's been issues where agencies are maybe hoarding unneeded supplies and that the cost to warehouse and store them could be significant," said Murphey.

Jones says that leads to yet another expense, "You're having to spend money for new inventory where there may be something out there that would fit the bill."

But again, no one really knows how bad the problem is. Equally concerning for the state auditor is who's collecting the list of inventory.

"It's kind of the fox watching the hen house," said Jones.

Each department is tracking its own inventory and Murphey says that lends itself to corruption.

"I think it's happened in the past, and I think that it's potentially been a really big problem," said Murphey.

But Murphey says there's no way to know for sure how much, if any, corruption has already occurred if you don't know what you have in the first place. It's why he's backing a legislative change.

"Our hope has been that through the state's enterprise software advances that it will be able to start tracking all new purchased item, and so at least for items that are bought going forward we'll be able to inventory and keep track of them," said Murphey.

Tracking the new items is a start. Plus, he'd like the auditor to get involved too.

"If they think the auditor is going to come in and point to those things and say, 'This is a problem,' then they'll naturally tend to correct it on their own," said Murphey.

 "Anytime we can eliminate waste or inefficiency, then those resources can be used somewhere else," said Jones.

Despite tracking concerns statewide, agencies that use the warehouse say they can certainly benefit from it, and state leaders say that's the whole point, as long as the state knows what's inside.

Agencies do surplus items. In fact, there's a huge facility in OKC where state agencies can purchase items from other state agencies and some items the public can purchase. Still, the auditor would like to see more items going to surplus or being shared between agencies.