The Jessamine County Sheriff’s Office was given “a clean” audit for 2010’s records, said Stephanie Steitzer, communications director of the Kentucky Auditors of Public Accounts.
The Frankfort office released two reports in November; the first was sheriff’s settlements, and the second was a statement of revenues.
The state auditor during the time of the review, Crit Luallen, released a statement stating the sheriff’s financial statement fairly represented the taxes charged, credited and paid, and that JSO was “in conformity with the modified cash basis of accounting.”
Unlike the 2009 audits, the state did not note a single instance of noncompliance, nor any issues with matters involving internal control over financial reporting.
“It was a good report,” Jessamine County Judge-Executive Neal Cassity said. “I’m happy with it.”
Each year, the sheriff’s office has the responsibilities of collecting property taxes, providing law enforcement and performing services for the county fiscal court and courts of justice.
This is how the sheriff’s office is basically funded.
The clean audit is a result of adhering to comments from the previous year that stated the sheriff’s office should “improve controls and documentation procedures for waivers of tax penalties and fees” and “deposit all funds received on a daily basis.”
During the 2009 tax collection period, the sheriff granted penalty waivers on 211 tax bills for a total of $70,869 in penalties waived. A large portion of that was a result of forms from 41 taxpayers (59 tax bills in all) that were missing or unavailable.
That oversight cost $21,996 in penalties waived. There were also seven other infractions listed by the auditors that accounted for the rest of the penalties waved.
“We don’t keep a tally of counties that have no instances of noncompliance versus those that have comments,” Steitzer said. “Audits that note no instances of noncompliance are not unusual, however.”
This year, the auditors made no comment on the JSO’s control of the collection and documenting process.
The report showed the sheriff’s operation were not considered to have any “material weaknesses.”
For this year, the sheriff’s excess fees increased by $27,152 since the previous year (2009). This resulted in a total of $168,596 as of Dec. 31, 2010. County revenues also increased according to the audit by $136,639, and expenditures increased by $109,541.
Calculated between April 2010 and April 2011, the sheriff’s office collected taxes of $32,546,785 for the district. This is only a slight increase from the $31,653,064 collected in 2009. The office retained commissions of $768,863, which is the evaluated cost to run the department, the report states. The sheriff’s office also distributed $31,745,788 to the district in 2010.
For a breakdown of both reports by the state, visit www.auditor.ky.gov/Public/Audit_Reports/Audit_Report.asp. Jessamine County audit results go back as far as 1999.
