Auditors also reviewed the department’s loan program, in which conditional loans can be forgiven if a company creates a specific number of jobs. They found that during the audit period, the department forgave 20 loans totaling $8.3 million — but only verified payroll records for four of those loans totaling $1.3 million. The department disagreed that its process for verifying employment data was insufficient, but said it would consider “more frequent and comprehensive reviews of payroll records at the time of loan forgiveness," the auditors wrote.