State Auditor Beth Wood told legislators that state agencies need better oversight of vendor contracts.

Citing three recent audits involving the state Department of Health and Human Services, the state health plan, and and office supply purchases that revealed poor monitoring and other deficiences,  Wood said contracts the state signs should be reviewed by a "cold eye," Lynn Bonner reports

The auditor's office cannot make agencies change the way they do business, Wood said, but she suggested legislators consider some action that would prevent mistakes that lead to waste.

The legislature's Program Evaluation Oversight Committee has invited Wood to make regular reports on audit findings.

"We want to make sure audit reports don't just sit on the shelf," said Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat.

If the program evaluation staff finds patterns of problems identified in state audits, Wood will be invited to the committee to talk about them, said evaluation division director John Turcotte.

A legislative office created to examine the benefit of public programs was ready to give its report  Thursday on the state's mental health services.

Anyone could tell from the title "Compromised controls and lack of focus hampered implementation of enhanced mental health services" it wasn't full of compliments, Lynn Bonner reports.

The report got cut from the agenda about a week before the Joint Oversight Program Evaluation Committee met.

A News & Observer investigation this year found that the state has wasted at least $400 million on a service one on of the enhanced programs, called community support. The federal government is holding on to $175 million in payments to the state because of suspected abuses in the program.

A chairman of the committee, Sen. Fletcher Hartsell of Concord, said the report was taken off the agenda because the committee didn't have time to talk about it. The mental health report was the only item removed from the revised agenda distributed in advance of the meeting.

Hartsell said the committee would get the mental health report back on its agenda. "End of session, probably," he said.