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The long wait is over, but the news was good on Marion County’s 2021 audit.

The Manager of Government Practice for the Wipfli Auditing Firm Josh Faivre joined the Marion County Board Tuesday night via video conference to present the report.

“We issued a clean unmodified opinion.  Exactly what you want, a passing grade.  A second opinion we issue is on internal control over compliance and internal control over financial reporting in compliance with government auditing standards.  We had clean unmodified opinions on this as well.  We did have one finding we noted on internal control regarding segregation of duties.”

Faivre says separate audits over federal and state funds and the circuit clerk’s office were also clean, with two internal control issues in the circuit clerk’s office.   While board member Brock Waggoner was concerned about the ongoing issues with internal control, Faivre said it is common for small governmental units.   He did agree to work with the county to get proper controls in place.

Waggoner also questioned if there were no issues, why special assistance needed to be called in and the audit was so late.

“When we first got the trial balances there were issues with the accounting software conversion, where there were things that were not reconciling.  One of the things we had to go through in the process is making sure your numbers were correct.  And that’s why this has drug out so long.”

Board Chair Debbie Smith continued to emphasize the late audit was not the fault of the county board or any county officeholder.

“It’s kind of frustrating because everybody thinks we’ve done this intentionally….we have not.  We were put in horrible circumstances having two auditors quit.  One retired and quit….and the other said he didn’t have the person to do it, you have to have special training to do this.”

Smith says she was left with a list of auditors to call to try and find someone to do the county audit and after about ten calls Wipfli agreed to take on the audit.   She noted Wipfli is expensive but they are much more thorough.

But her explanation did not satisfy Waggoner.

“These steps taken to get here, you have left out several of those steps.  That is what the public needs to know.  At the end of the day it’s irresponsible and devious of you to not inform the public correctly of what has actually happened and trying to hide the truth.”

Smith responded, “I’m sorry, that’s not me.  I’m not going to address that, because I don’t lie.”

With the 2021 audit done, Favors says they will move on to the 2022 audit which should be completed in the next few months.   He noted the 2023 audit would then be addressed and completed before the end of the county’s fiscal year on November 30th putting them back on track.

The audit showed at the end of fiscal 2021, Marion County had fund balances of $4,435,496, down $40,000 from the prior year.