YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

Report No. 2005-37

June 2005

Our office conducted an audit of the Ex Officio County Collector, Livingston County, Missouri.

State statute requires the state auditor to audit the office of the County Collector after being notified of a vacancy in that office.  On December 31, 2004, a vacancy occurred in the office of the Ex Officio County Collector of Livingston County, Missouri; a successor was appointed and sworn into office effective January 1, 2005.  A final settlement for the period March 1, 2004 to December 31, 2004, was filed on January 31, 2005. 

Although recommendations have been made in several prior audit reports, the former Ex Officio Collector did not adequately reconcile cash balances to existing liabilities.  Monthly bank reconciliations were performed; however, no check register balance or other book balance was maintained.  As a result, the reconciled cash balance of $746,777 at December 31, 2004, was not compared to any book balance or existing liabilities.

As similarly discussed in our prior report, the former Ex Officio Collector did not reconcile abstracted transactions to daily deposits.   For some deposits reviewed, we noted unidentified differences existed between the daily abstracted receipts and deposits.  The deposit log which the former Ex Officio Collector used to document the payment details and provide support for individual deposits, and some paid tax statements related to the deposits reviewed could not be located.

The former Ex Officio Collector continued to utilize his manual recordkeeping system after the implementation of the computerized property tax system.  Although various data was entered into the system and some monthly reports were generated and filed for retention, there was no documentation to show that the manual information was reconciled to the computer reports.  The computer information was not thoroughly reviewed and tested. 

Rather than resolving penalty interest calculation discrepancies, the former Ex Officio Collector recalculated what the penalty interest amount should have been in total, and adjusted distribution amounts for under and over payments.  The practice of distributing amounts that do not agree to amounts collected could result in a bank account overage or shortage at month end.

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