SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - It seems the Madison County Regional Office of Education has too much money lying around.

A state audit released this morning reports that the office, which coordinates support services for school districts throughout the county, had more than $220,000 in deposits that weren’t insured and collateralized the way those public funds are required to be. The office had another $26,000 in leftover government grant money on hand that was supposed to have been returned to the granting agency almost two years ago, according to the audit.

(The full audit is available here.)

As state audits of “ROE’s” go, the ones today regarding the Madison County office are actually pretty mild knocks, having to do with lax paperwork and improper fund monitoring.

Illinois’ statewide system of ROE’s have been controversial in Illinois over the years for deeper reasons, with some critics insisting they are a wasteful level of bureaucracy that’s used primarily to reward the officials who run the offices.

A few years ago, some readers might recall, it was a state audit like this one that brought to the surface allegations that the Franklin-Williamson County ROE was missing lots of money that appeared to have been spent with phony travel vouchers. (That office’s superintendent was later convicted of theft.) A Post-Dispatch investigation that followed found that some ROE’s around the state were paying for things like spa treatments as employee incentives, and granting $1,500 “mileage bonuses” that had nothing to do with mileage.

The Madison County ROE responded to the audit by agreeing to better fiscal oversight practices, according to the audit summary. We’ve put a call into the office’s superintendent for further comment.