YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

Report No. 2005-53

August 2005

IMPORTANT:  The Missouri State Auditor is required by state law to conduct audits once every 4 years in counties, like Cooper, that do not have a county auditor. In addition to a financial and compliance audit of various county operating funds, the State Auditor's statutory audit covers additional areas of county operations, as well as the elected county officials, as required by Missouri's Constitution.

This audit of Cooper County included additional areas of county operations, as well as the elected county officials.  The following concerns were noted as part of the audit:

• The county had not adequately documented its methods for allocating certain costs related to emergency communications equipment and operations among the various county funds and these allocations were not always made consistently.  The county transfers monies from the Law Enforcement Center Fund (LEC) to the E911 Fund to reimburse for non-emergency dispatching performed.  However, the county has no documentation to demonstrate how the annual transfer amount was derived and has undertaken no study to determine whether the amounts transferred are fair based on relative work load of the E911 staff.  In 2002, the county planned to transfer $97,000 from the LEC Fund to the E911 Fund but failed to make the transfer and has no current plans to correct the oversight. 

The county divided approximately $200,000 in communications equipment upgrade costs equally between the LEC Fund, E911 Fund and Special Road and Bridge Fund but did not track or estimate each department's usage of the systems to determine whether its cost allocation was equitable.  Likewise, the E911 Fund annually reimbursed the General Revenue Fund for part of the salary of one employee performing services for both funds, but no timesheet was prepared to determine the appropriate division of costs between the two funds.

• The Sheriff's deputies have accumulated significant, and in some cases excessive, compensatory time balances and the County Commission and Sheriff have been unable to significantly reduce the accumulated balances.  The time sheets prepared by one deputy contained errors and inconsistencies in the reported hours worked and compensatory time balances.  The jail administrator accumulated about 600 hours of compensatory time as of March 2005 according to her personal records.  However, the county has not clearly communicated its overtime policy for department heads. 

• The county and circuit court have not resolved differences between themselves about the need and funding for a deputy juvenile officer and have incurred significant legal costs to contest the issue.  Legal fees paid by the county and circuit court to contest this issue currently total about $34,000 – nearly as much as the annual salary and benefit costs for the employee.

• The county had not considered the cost effectiveness of a vehicle leased for the County Clerk. It appears eliminating the lease and reimbursing the County Clerk for travel in his personal vehicle would have resulted in lower costs to the county.

Also included in the audit were recommendations related to records and monitoring of fuel usage by the Road and Bridge Department, the review of agreements with cities for property tax collection services, and lack of a written policy and records for fixed assets.

Complete Audit Report