County gets ‘good audit’ from state

County gets ‘good audit’ from state

Minor issues no cause for concern, easy fixes according to officials

news@theeveningtimes.com

Crittenden County received a clean audit review by state examiners, but like past years, auditors found some minor points to ding the county on.

This year, auditors wrote up County Judge Woody Wheeless for the Quorum Court not passing an ordinance each time the county does business with an elected official.

“They said we didn’t have proper documentation saying we can do business with elected officials,” Wheeless said. “We pulled up a blanket ordinance that I think we passed in 2006 showing where we could do business with every elected official.”

Wheeless said auditors informed the county that they need to pass an ordinance in every instance where an elected official wins a bid — which they now have been doing since it was brought to their attention.

“When they wrote me up, in the next column they already showed where I had made the correction,” Wheeless said.

Wheeless said all of the write-ups in every county department were for minor things.

“I don’t believe there is such a thing as a 100 percent clean audit,” Wheeless said. “I just believe it is their job to say you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that.”

County Treasurer Charlie Suiter was written up for not having a dedicated Internet connection line to his computer.

“We have back up computers. We have everything you can imagine,” Suiter said. “But I have no wireless hookups to my system so I did not meet the standards. They are afraid that somebody can hack in by wireless. So now I will have to run an independent line in from a pole outside of my window.”

The new line will now cost the county about $200 a month to satisfy the audi- tors.

Sheriff Mike Allen was written up for not having an adequate disaster recovery plan in place even thought it is the same plan used in Craighead County that was approved by different auditors

in the past.

“Honestly, they find something to write everybody up for,” Allen said. “I had a plan in place and they said it wasn’t good enough. It was the exact identical plan Craighead County had except that it said Crittenden County. They accepted it from Craighead County but they wouldn’t accept the same exact plan for Crittenden

County.”

Wheeless said for years every city and county in the state has gotten written up for not having the proper segregation of duties. It’s an especially big problem for rural counties because they don’t have the money to hire extra employees to be in compliance.

The state finally stopped writing everyone up for it this year.

“In the five years I’ve been audited, that was the only thing I’ve ever been written up for,” Wheeless said. “Nobody is breaking the law doing what they are doing, so they stopped writing everyone up for that.

Justice Vickie Robertson said next year a different set of auditors will come in and find something else to write the county up for.

“And that’s the problem,” Robertson said. “There are no standards. It’s all so subjective on what one auditor says over the other.”

Suiter agreed.

“It is,” Suiter said. “We had a different auditor this year. He was very thorough and very good and I learned a lot. It was a totally different audit experience than I’ve had before.”

Wheeless said residents can take pride in the fact that the county is well run and that they regularly receive

a clean bill of health

by the state.

“Even with this, we had a good audit for our county,” Wheeless said.

By Mark Randall