The critical findings are included in the latest annual audit of the attorney general's office, which oversees the child support agency. The audit was conducted by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm and the office of state auditor Marion Higa.

The audit follows similar negative reviews dating back to at least 1992 blaming the agency for its lack of financial controls and inadequate service to the families it serves.

In his formal response to the audit, Attorney General Mark Bennett strongly disagreed with the auditors. Bennett said the agency's bookkeeping problem began as far back as 1987 when the CSEA was transferred from the state Department of Human Services to the attorney general's office.

"At the time the transfer was made, the agency bank accounts were not reconciled — there were no records or subsidiary ledgers available or provided," Bennett said.

"This created a problem that continued year after year and has been noted in every (or virtually every) audit for more than 10 years," Bennett wrote.

The CSEA now performs daily and monthly bank reconciliations "of what is collected and disbursed," Bennett said, adding in an interview yesterday that the historical "variance" between collections and payouts still carried on the books now amounts to "about $80,000 and is going down over time."

Bennett said when he met with the auditing team last month about its findings, the auditors were "unable to describe or offer any practical way in which we could completely eliminate this 'material weakness.' "

The auditors also repeated earlier audit findings that the CSEA computer system, called KEIKI, contributes to the agency's bookkeeping problems.

"It is incapable of providing a single listing of all child support cases and the total amount owed for child support," the audit said.

"We do note, however, that KEIKI does meet federal child support enforcement system requirements and that the department is in the process of improving the system's documentation and reporting capabilities," the audit said.

In other findings, the auditors reported a series of minor procurement discrepancies in the attorney general's purchase of computers, supplies and maintenance services, as well as a failure to keep all required procurement records in office files.

"The Department of the Attorney General is striving to be perfect in procurement," Bennett said. "As the audit points out, we are not perfect but we are going to redouble our efforts to try to be."

As reported by The Advertiser last month, CSEA has failed to collect more than a half-billion dollars in delinquent payments and ranks last among all states in collecting overdue child support.

The agency's performance has cost the state millions of dollars in federal payments given as incentives to states that improve their collection and distribution of child support payments.