County Tax Audit Shows No Missing Funds
Despite a round of snarky letter writing between Platte County Public Works Director Greg Sager and Platte County Auditor Siobhann Williams, all appears to be well with the balance sheets up at the Platte County Administration Building.
In May, Sager released data from his office that seemed to show a nearly $2.5 million shortfall in the county’s road tax fund. Sager’s computations showed that the balance from the 3/8 cent tax should be $4,032,762. Numbers provided by the Platte County Treasurer showed the fund at $1,598,246. In a letter to Williams, Sager demanded an audit from the newly elected Williams but Williams said he would have to wait while her staff finished their current projects, further stating that the money appeared to be accounted for in different numbered accounts. Williams blamed accounting procedures already in place at the county.
On Thursday, an independent auditor said she was correct.
In a report to the Platte County Commission, the independent auditing firm of Trout, Beeman & Co. reported that the county’s cash from the fund was at $4,049,751 as of December 31, 2006 a number that nearly matched Sager’s numbers.
The report detailed that most of the mix-up occurred because of the way Platte County was funding the construction costs for the Roads Master Plan. Initially, funds for construction came from $8.5 million worth of bonds the county issued in 2003 and 2004. The county placed the money from those bonds into a numbered account (206) and planned on repaying most of the debt with future money accrued from the road tax revenues. The firm found that since the bond money was placed in the account, no additional cash had been transferred into the fund. Most officers at the county level, the auditor said, believed that all of the road tax funds were placed in account 206. They were not.
“The remaining portions of the tax are being receipted into escrow funds on the county’s general ledger,” the report stated. “In order to determine the County’s cash available to complete the projects in the Roads Master Plan and make the required debt service payments on the bonds you have to add up the cash in Fund 206 (which is the county’s portion of the tax), the cash in Fund 440 (which is the construction fund that holds the cash from bond issues), and the county’s portion of cash in Fund 360 (which holds the county’s portion and the other entities portion of the tax being accumulated to pay the debt service on the bonds).”
The auditing firm said Sager agreed with the analysis and praised his office and Williams for assisting in performing the project.
While Williams said the audit came out as she expected, there was still more work to be done in unraveling accounting procedures at the county.
“During next year’s budgeting process we’re going to take a look at that accounting process. We’re going to review a lot of the old accounting processes around here. The report says that the way the county previously accounted made it very difficult to see what was going on.”
This is not the first time in recent years that Platte County has had a discrepancy with funds.
In 1998 county office holders were first warned that there was a problem with the cash reconciliation process in the auditor’s office. This problem was again cited by outside auditors in 1999. In the documents, county officials were warned that “the County must be able to reconcile its cash and investments in order to maintain and demonstrate accountability of its assets to the citizens of Platte County.”
Last July, Brown reported a $195,000 discrepancy between the county bank account and the county general ledger. Outside auditors were again called into find out the reason for the discrepancy which was blamed on procedures.