Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority

This is a State Auditor performance audit of the Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority for January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2015.

“This report details the audit objectives, scope, methodology, and conclusions for the audit period, January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2015.”

Auditors looked at whether the Steamship Authority properly handled parking-lot revenue and passenger revenue.

“In this performance audit, we reviewed and assessed selected activities, such as certain aspects of the Steamship Authority’s revenue, and compliance with applicable laws, rules, and regulations.”

The Steamship Authority provides ferry transportation for people, vehicles, and freight serving Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, so its money-handling systems affect an important public service.

“The Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority (Steamship Authority) was established under Chapter 701 of the Acts of 1960, as amended, “to provide adequate transportation of persons and necessaries of life for the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.””

If you use or depend on the ferries, this audit gives some reassurance that the reviewed passenger and parking revenue processes were working properly during the audit period.

“Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding each objective.”

The auditors answered yes to both main questions: parking-lot revenue and passenger revenue were properly administered, recorded, and reported.

“Based on our audit, we have concluded that the Steamship Authority has established adequate controls and practices in the areas we reviewed that were related to our audit objectives.”

The report does not list corrective actions or recommendations, because the audit did not find significant deficiencies in the reviewed areas.

“We did not identify any significant deficiencies in those areas.”

This was a large public ferry operation, with more than $93 million in revenue in 2014 and more than $100 million in 2015, so clean controls over revenue are important.

“From January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2015, the Steamship Authority had the following revenue:”

A performance audit means auditors tested selected operations and controls; here, they reviewed samples rather than every transaction, so they did not apply the sample results to all transactions.

“Because our sampling was nonstatistical, we did not project the results of our audit tests to the total populations in the areas we reviewed.”