State auditors initiate 2016 review for county

The State Auditor’s Office was met by a crowd of department heads in the county commissioners’ chambers at the courthouse Monday afternoon as the kickoff for the county’s 2016 audit.

Assistant Audit Manager Molly Mors was present and detailed the process that is now underway to perform a federal audit, a financial audit of the county for 2016 and an accountability audit.

Mors detailed that the federal audit process is mostly complete and is due by Sept. 30. She said this audit is mostly for the Public Works department and looks at federal grant compliance. Specifically, this audit is looking at grants related to highway planning and construction.

“We’ll just stick with Public Works on that one,” said Mors. “We’re almost all the way through with that and haven’t found any significant issues.”

In conjunction with the federal audit, the financial audit is underway. Mors said that process will likely be complete around the same time as the federal audit since they are similar.

“We’ll be on site for about two weeks,” said Mors. “The accountability audit takes a little longer, and we’ll probably start that within the next month.”

The accountability audit is not due until the end of the year, and it will have the state auditors going over many of the county’s processes.

“We’ll be looking into the safeguarding of public resources,” said Mors. “We’ll be asking lots of questions about internal controls.”

Whitman County has dealt with audit woes dating back more than a decade, a time period in which the county has only been able to provide materially accurate financial statements in five of 11 years. Last year, the county was unable to provide any financial statements for the audit of the 2015 records.

Mors is conducting the audit process with Jonna Davis, the audit lead. Both are expected to be on site here until the audit process is complete.

County Auditor Eunice Coker said she and her department are feeling “much better” about this year’s audit process than in years past.

“We’ve got staff that’s reliable and knows what they’re doing,” she said.

Coker said County Finance Director Sharron Cunningham, who rejoined the county staff last September, has been “tremendous.”

“She is just top of the line,” said Coker. “She’s jumped on straightening up the bad set up, and she’s really been digging into the financials.”

Last year’s audit report noted a $2.5 million discrepancy between the county’s books and bank accounts, raising an alarm for state auditors and county officials. Coker said Cunningham was able to help resolve that issue.

“It turns out there was more money in the bank than the general ledger said,” noted Coker. “She was able to find that and fix that.”

In addition to Cunningham, there is also now an assistant county finance director. Jessica Jensema was hired recently for that position, and Coker said she is pleased with her performance.

“She is just picking stuff up,” said Coker.

That Coker is feeling much better about the whole process is “the understatement of the year,” she added.