JACKSON, MS – Mississippi needs to adopt guidelines that limit how many new vehicles agencies buy each year, a state auditor’s report says. The report found that Mississippi averages one state-owned vehicle for every three or four employees, according to www.clarionledger.com.

Currently, there are 9,366 state-owned vehicles at a combined value of almost $222 million. Of those vehicles, 1,609 are being used by the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), which includes the state’s eight public universities.

In its latest report, the auditor’s office studied the work of the new Bureau of Fleet Management, which was set up in 2006 to implement a statewide system to manage all state-owned vehicles.

They determined that IHL accounts for 17 percent of the state vehicles even though they are not mandated to participate because they are “their own state government.”

The auditor’s office is recommending IHL either fall under the bureau’s system or create a similar system of its own.

IHL officials said they have their own system to track vehicles.