YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

Report No. 2006-74

December 2006

IMPORTANT:  The Missouri State Auditor is required by state law to conduct audits once every 4 years in counties, like Dekalb, that do not have a county auditor. In addition to a financial 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.

• The ACCD 911 Board did not have adequate procurement procedures and did not closely follow the terms of a federal Homeland Security grant for emergency communications equipment received from the state Department of Public Safety (DPS).  Due to favorable pricing on its initial bid for equipment approved under the grant, the board purchased additional equipment with the remaining grant funding.  However, the board could not provide documentation of specific approval from the DPS for these additional purchases, nor were the additional purchases bid as required.  Items purchased without bids totaled approximately $236,000.  In addition, the board did not solicit requests for qualifications when contracting for engineering services related to the grant, totaling approximately $68,000 and the board did not ensure that the vendors providing services were in good standing with the federal government.

• The county has not sufficiently reduced its property tax revenues by 50 percent of the sales tax revenues as required, resulting in an accumulation of approximately $154,000 of excess property taxes as of December 31, 2005.  In addition, no rollback calculations have been performed since 2001 and the accumulated excess property tax collections have not been tracked.

• While the county bid numerous items, county records did not always contain adequate documentation of the county's efforts to compare prices (i.e. phone contacts, inquiries) or reasons to support selecting other than a low bidder or sole source purchase decisions.  For example, the county did not maintain bid documentation or contracts for remodeling work at the nursing home totaling about $86,000 during 2003, 2004 and 2005 nor did the county document its basis for selecting the high bidder for a courthouse landscaping and sidewalk project or its basis for not bidding the concrete for the project.  In addition the county made duplicate payments totaling about $5,000 for nine concrete deliveries on the project and improperly charged $40,000 of project costs to the Special Road and Bridge Fund.

• The current and former Ex Officio County Collectors (EOC) did not prepare accurate and timely annual settlements and did not reconcile bank account balances to existing liabilities.  In addition, both EOCs charged a certification fee not allowable by law and some worksheets supporting the calculations of commissions earned for delinquent city tax collections could not be located.

• The ACCD 911 Board has accumulated a large cash balance with no documented plans for its use, has not solicited bids or performed other price comparison procedures for some major purchases, has not solicited requests for qualifications for the services provided by its consulting engineer, and has not executed contracts with the counties and city for dispatching and 911 coordination services.  In addition, the financial records of the board are not properly reconciled and procedures for review, approval, and processing of expenditures should be improved.

• In November 2005, the commissioners of the new Daviess-Dekalb Regional Jail District contracted to acquire a 270 bed private jail facility in Daviess County and on February 15, 2006, the district assumed operations at the jail facility.  The district's 2006 budget did not adequately disclose the jail district commission's current and long range plans and the jail district commission has not received periodic budget to actual comparative reports.  In addition, accounting duties are not adequately segregated and the supervisory reviews of financial records are not adequate, bank reconciliations on the operating account are not current, and the commissary account reconciliations are not adequately documented.  Also, receipt slips are not issued for some monies received and some collections are not immediately recorded in the accounting records.

Also included in the audit were recommendations related to the preparation of the county's Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards, and to the operations of the Circuit Clerk, Sheriff,  and Prosecuting Attorney.

Complete Audit Report