Ohio Promised to Fix a $648M Reporting Gap. It Grew to $692.6M.
Summary
Ohio's state auditor told the Department of Education and Workforce last year to fix how it reports school-meal payments to the federal government, and gave it a deadline: July 2025. The next audit, testing the year through the month before that deadline, found the same failure, unchanged -- every School Breakfast and National School Lunch subaward payment tested, $692.6 million to 1,156 subrecipients, still missing from the federal transparency system. Auditors marked it a repeat finding, on a two-year unreported total now past $1.3 billion.
A promise with a deadline, and an audit that landed on it
The Department first drew this finding in the audit covering fiscal year 2024⧉, when auditors found $648.1 million in Child Nutrition Cluster payments to 1,039 subrecipients missing from the federal system entirely -- every School Breakfast Program subaward tested (758 of 758) and every National School Lunch Program subaward tested (1,039 of 1,039). The Department's corrective action plan that year named a fix and a date: additional internal controls, promised complete by July 2025. The next Single Audit -- testing the year through June 30, 2025, a month before that deadline -- found the fix still hadn't been built: the Department's own account states the new process "was not implemented during the audit period." Every School Breakfast payment tested (1,057 of 1,057) and every National School Lunch payment tested (1,156 of 1,156), together $692.6 million, was still missing from SAM.gov. Auditors marked it "Repeat Finding from Prior Audit? Yes."
View data as table
| FY2024 (July 2023-June 2024) | 648,134,927 | 100% of tested School Breakfast and National School Lunch subaward payments unreported -- the finding's first year |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 (July 2024-June 2025) | 692,578,068 | 100% of tested School Breakfast and National School Lunch subaward payments unreported again -- an explicit repeat finding |
Why a reporting gap is not a paperwork footnote
A subaward report is not a courtesy -- it is how anyone outside the agency, including Congress and itself, can verify that a school district actually received the meal reimbursement Ohio says it disbursed. Without it, the $692.6 million exists only in the state's own books; no independent public record confirms which of the 1,156 subrecipients got what, or when. The audit states plainly what that risks: continued noncompliance means the Department risks federal funding being reduced, taken away, or other sanctions imposed by the federal grantor agency⧉ -- , which supplied $4.8 billion of the $45.4 billion in federal funds Ohio administered that year⧉.
The two years' audits do not even agree on why it happened. FY2024's finding blamed unclear instructions within federal regulations and a lack of guidance from . FY2025's finding gives a different account: the Department built a new process for collecting the data to report but had not turned it on during the audit period, so no control existed to check the Child Nutrition Cluster's payments before they were due on SAM.gov. Whatever the true cause, the audits agree on the result: two consecutive years, 100% of what auditors checked was missing.
What the Department says now, and what hasn't been tested yet
The Department's newest corrective action plan says the fix -- edit checks and a reconciliation before data reaches SAM.gov -- was completed in December 2025, five months after the date it had promised auditors the first time. That claim has not yet been independently tested. Single Audits run roughly a year behind the period they cover, so the next one, spanning July 2025 through June 2026, is not due until around March 2027 -- the first point an auditor, rather than the Department itself, checks whether the December fix held.
- Ohio's Department of Education and Workforce failed to report $692.6 million in School Breakfast and National School Lunch subaward payments to 1,156 subrecipients in FY2025 -- 100% of what auditors tested, and an explicit repeat of the FY2024 finding.
- The FY2024 finding already carried a promise: the Department's own corrective action plan set a July 2025 fix date. The next audit -- testing the year through June 30, 2025, a month before that deadline -- found the fix still wasn't built, and the failure $44.4 million larger.
- The two years cite different causes -- unclear federal guidance in FY2024, an unimplemented internal process in FY2025 -- but the outcome was unchanged both times: zero of the tested subaward payments reached the federal SAM.gov transparency system.
- The audit states the stakes directly: continued noncompliance risks Ohio's federal funding being reduced, withheld, or otherwise sanctioned by , the agency that supplied $4.8 billion of the state's $45.4 billion in federal money that year.
- The Department's newest fix, dated December 2025, has not been independently tested. Ohio's next Single Audit, covering FY2026, is not due until roughly March 2027 -- the first point an auditor rather than the Department checks whether it held.
This finding carries no dollar "questioned cost." Unlike several of the same audit's other findings -- Medicaid eligibility errors, TechCred training-program fraud, ineligible Summer EBT recipients -- auditors did not determine that any of the $692.6 million or $648.1 million was spent improperly; the finding is that the Department cannot show, on the public record, that it reported the payments it says it made. The roughly $1.3 billion two-year total is this piece's own sum of the two years' separately reported figures, not a number either audit states directly. "Tested" transactions are the transactions each audit's own error tables report checking, which in both years matched the full subrecipient count named in that year's narrative, not a smaller statistical sample. FY2025 figures are from the Ohio Auditor of State's Single Audit for the year ended June 30, 2025 (issued March 27, 2026); FY2024 figures are from the prior year's edition of the same audit (issued March 27, 2025). Both were read directly in full; the Federal Audit Clearinghouse's independent record of the FY2025 filing was used only to corroborate the audit's total scale and filing date.
Sources(4) ▾
- Ohio Auditor of State, State of Ohio Single Audit for the Year Ended June 30, 2025 (2026-03-27) — Ohio's statutory single audit of federal funds for FY2025 (July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025), filed with the federal Audit Clearinghouse. Contains Finding 2025-009 (Schedule of Findings and Questioned Costs, p. 49-50): the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce's Child Nutrition Cluster Transparency Act reporting failure, marked a repeat of the prior year's finding 2024-010. Also contains the Department's Corrective Action Plan for 2025-009 (p. 85) and the state-agency material-weakness index (p. 5-6) confirming this is one of two material weaknesses assigned to the Department. Read directly, full text extracted. ohioauditor.gov · original document
- Ohio Auditor of State, State of Ohio Single Audit for the Year Ended June 30, 2024 (2025-03-27) — The prior year's single audit (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). Contains Finding 2024-010 (Schedule of Findings and Questioned Costs, p. 52-54): the first-flagged version of the same Child Nutrition Cluster Transparency Act reporting failure, marked 'Repeat Finding from Prior Audit? No.' Also contains the Department's original Corrective Action Plan (p. 89) promising a July 2025 fix -- the promise tested, and broken, by the following year's audit. Read directly, full text extracted. ohioauditor.gov · original document
- Federal Audit Clearinghouse (U.S. General Services Administration), Federal Audit Clearinghouse Summary — State of Ohio, FY2025 Single Audit (Report ID 2025-06-GSAFAC-0000403196) (2026-03-26) — The federal government's own record of Ohio's FY2025 single-audit filing -- an independent host confirming the audit's total federal expenditures ($45,359,926,637), program count (441), auditor of record, and FAC acceptance date (March 26, 2026), corroborating the Ohio Auditor of State's own reporting of the same audit from a separate federal system. app.fac.gov · original document
- Ohio Auditor of State, Annual State of Ohio Single Audit Details $45 Billion in Spending Through 371 Federally Funded Programs (press release) (2026-03-27) — The Auditor's own announcement of the FY2025 single audit, used only for total statewide context (18 findings across seven agencies, $6.8 million in questioned costs, $45 billion in total federal spending) and to confirm the Child Nutrition Cluster reporting finding did not make the state's own headline framing, which centered on Medicaid eligibility errors and benefit fraud instead. ohioauditor.gov · original document
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Every state that spends federal money above a threshold must file a Single Audit -- an independent annual check, performed for Ohio by the elected state Auditor's office, of whether the state complied with the rules attached to that money. One of those rules is the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act: a state agency that pays out $30,000 or more in federal subaward money must report the payment on the federal SAM.gov transparency system within a month, so Congress, , and the public can see where it went. Ohio's Single Audit for the year ended June 30, 2025⧉, filed with the federal Audit Clearinghouse in March 2026, found the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce had not reported a single one of the $692.6 million in School Breakfast and National School Lunch payments it made to 1,156 subrecipients that year -- and marked the finding an explicit repeat of the year before, when $648.1 million went unreported the same way.