State inspectors visit public schools around Maryland to ensure that the buildings are properly maintained.
But after three years during which inspectors examined 679 school buildings, they had only completed reports for 190 of those buildings, according to a legislative audit released this week. So local school systems were still waiting to learn the results.
As of the end of last year, according to the audit, the Interagency Committee on School Construction failed to issue reports on 72 percent of the inspections it conducted over a three-year period that ended June 30 last year.
Earlier this month, David G. Lever, executive director of the school construction committee, asked the five-member panel that runs the agency to approve a drastically scaled-back schedule for inspections next year. Lever said the rollback was necessary because of a severe staffing shortage.
But Gov. Larry Hogan and Comptroller Peter Franchot, who hold two of the three seats on the powerful Board of Public Works, which oversees the committee, have expressed opposition to the plan.
The proposal has been put on hold and still awaits a vote of the committee.
The audit shows how severe the backlog of building maintenance inspection reports has become. According to the audit, at the end of last year, five of the state's 24 jurisdictions were still waiting for reports of inspections conducted in 2013. At the same time, 18 school systems still had reports pending from 2014.
The audit found that during the three years, inspectors found conditions at 25 schools to be "not adequate." In eight of those cases — from the period between May 2013 and November 2014 — the reports had still not been issued by December 2015.
The report said those inspections found "deficiencies that could affect the health and safety of students and staff at these schools, such as unsanitary conditions and fire safety issues."
In its response, the agency told auditors that since the end of last year, it has completed its inspection reports from the 2013 and 2014 budget years and delivered them to school systems.
But the agency said it faces continuing problems keeping up with its work, including the planned retirement of Lever at the end of August. Lever resigned in protest last month after Hogan and Franchot intervened in the agency's decision-making to force Baltimore County and Baltimore City to install portable window air conditioners.