Audit questions Pa. overpayments to tech. college.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- An Erie County technical school that received $35 million in state job-training funds during its 10 years of operation awarded degrees and certificates to fewer than 125 students over the same time period, according to a new audit released earlier this month.

The report by Auditor General Robert P. Casey Jr. found that about one-third of the total funding given to the Northwest Pennsylvania Technical Institute--$12 Million--came during the final two years of Gov. Tom Ridge's administration.

Casey alleges that the state continued to send excessive amounts of money to the school despite persistent warnings from auditors in the governor's budget office of "major weaknesses and questionable practices" concerning the school's financial management.

"I don't know how you can justify over a period of years, awarding degrees to only 10 students and certificates to 109 students ... with warning sign after warning sign," Casey said. "It's the kind of situation I don't think we've ever run across."

The institute, which opened as a community college in 1991, was forced to close in 2001 under a new law that called for the dissolution of community colleges whose programs were primarily nonacademic. It reopened the same year as the Center for Advanced Manufacturing & Technology, or CAMtech, and owes the state $16 million for excess aid it received from 1991 to 2001, Casey said.

The institute's programs were delivered through cooperative agreements it had with 15 other technical training schools. The audit recommends that those third-party providers, which were allegedly overpaid by the school, help repay some of the money owed to the state.

In a written response to the audit, a state Education Department official said the department was taking action to avoid similar problems in the future. The department will compare future community-college requests for state aid with the latest available audit information, said Frank Meehan, acting deputy secretary for postsecondary and higher education.

"If the comparison suggests that the college will be over-advanced a significant amount, the payments will be reduced until the college can satisfactorily account for the discrepancy," Meehan said.

In the meantime, CAMtech's future is uncertain because no state funding was included for the school in the state budget that Gov. Ed Rendell signed in March. school President Jerry Covert said. Officials hope funding can be restored in an education-spending plan the governor is negotiating with legislative leaders, but they are also forming a task force to work on a contingency plan, he said.

"We've inherited a bill that we shouldn't be solely held responsible for paying. We don't have the money to pay back the bill," Covert said.