My head is still spinning from statements made by the audit staff such as, “we found confirming purchase orders”, meaning purchase orders created after or in conjunction with receiving an invoice. Does that open the door to fraud or mismanagement????
Our Chief Auditor followed with this statement,
“I think the fact that it has (been) said that procedures need to be
reviewed and revised, I think would be taking us down to where
we have controls. Because if you don’t have control, then I don’t
know what you have.”
Yes, this is like our kids using our credit card without our knowledge and then informing us of the necessity after we receive the bill!!!! We the people are required to balance our check books but the county has a siphon into our bank accounts so when they need more money, they raise OUR taxes.
So, we have a $1.818BILL dollar budget, with processes in place which allow back dating of purchase orders to match invoices. AND a system in which the Audit Department cannot quantify results because, according to their report, “Data were not sufficiently reliable to identify all contracts and contract amounts consistently.”
Again, according to the audit staff financial controls are not in place and our County Auditor stated “…if you don’t have controls, then I don’t know what you have.”
However, I know what we have: an accounting mess that must be cleaned up immediately. But you know, I’m just “looking for a sound bite”.
