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Benton County was warned Saturday, Feb 16, 2008 By Doug Thompson The Benton County Tax Collector's office has problems. The county received warnings about those problems from state auditors long before the latest snafu. Courthouse tax collections may not sound exciting. Well, when and if somebody messes up your tax account, dear reader, be assured that you'll find it thrilling. Here's the Morning News' sum-up of the latest known error: "The Benton County Tax Collector's Office overpaid thousands of dollars in tax funds to local cities and a volunteer fire department in 2007. Now the county wants its money back." The money was paid in April. The error wasn't caught until earlier this month. State auditors found slack recordkeeping in the office at least as early as 2004, before the current collector took office. Here's the bottom line from the report on the office for that year: "Failure to follow generally accepted accounting practices and procedures (and) state law, as well as the failure to provide adequate management oversight over accounting personnel, could lead to improper settlement of tax monies and unidentified asset misappropriation." Sending two full payments instead of one to fire departments and cities provides an excellent example of "improper settlement of tax monies." The 2005 state report said the same thing, only longer and louder. Accounting journals were not properly posted. There were not adequate categories to sort out revenue and spending. Records were not reconciled with each other or with bank accounts in a timely manner. Year-end accounting that was supposed to close the books showed "adjustments that were still not settled with the taxing units, taxpayers or State of Arkansas," the audit found. "The current tax account - deposits of $115,054,069 - was not reconciled for any month of 2006, as of January 2007," it continued. Note that the auditors looked ahead a bit here. They noticed that the "current tax account" of 2006 was not rigorously kept. This - putting it mildly - isn't a good sign for the full audit of 2006's figures. That one's underway now. Expect the results sometime in June, but maybe later. "The tax collector's failure to follow generally accepted accounting practices and procedures, state law and the failure to provide adequate management oversight over accounting personnel could result in improper settlement of tax monies, unrecoverable losses, unidentified assets or misappropriation," the latest report said. That's some echo. The reports are available at http://www.legaudit.state.ar.us/. Click on the "counties" link and search for Benton County. The state wasn't the only source of warning. Beaver Lake Volunteer Fire Department board member E.J. Miller told The Morning News that he caught the same kind of overpayment mistake last year. This year, however, the office didn't supply a paper report. "The ability to cross check was stopped," he said. It's part of my lot in life to read a bunch of government documents. The most intriguing thing in the two state audits was what was not said. The audits didn't say equipment was outdated, workers were untrained or unqualified, the offices were understaffed or the wrong type of software was used. Both times, the state audits cited "failure to provide adequate management oversight over accounting personnel." What follows is my interpretation. It should not be misconstrued as anything said by Legislative Audit workers. Those folks stay out of politics as much as possible and just do the math. I'm the one who's a wise guy for a living. The Benton County Tax Collector should be an accountant. The reports say that the big failure is not following proper accounting practices. The obvious fix is to have an office holder who knows thoroughly what proper accounting practices are. Primaries are coming up. Beware of any collector candidate who says he needs an outside consultant, new software, more staff or anything like that. What's needed most is somebody who knows the subject. There's another problem at the Benton County courthouse. I thought long and hard before bringing it up. The first voter returns from presidential primary night didn't show up until the wee hours of the next morning. I sympathize with county election officials after the fiasco of 2006. However, taking more than six hours to count the returns of a one-issue set of primaries wasn't reassuring. The purpose of a quick vote count is not to meet newspaper deadlines or get the results on the nightly news broadcasts. You count votes rapidly to leave as little time as possible for tampering with the results. I'm not accusing anybody of tampering with these particular results or making plans to do so in future elections. All I'm saying is a well-run vote count should be fast and smooth. Confidence in Benton County's elections isn't restored yet. |
