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WHETSTONE — After an initial review of the Whetstone Fire District’s bookkeeping, an outside accountant has “serious concerns” about how the district has conducted its finances in the past few years.
“I found misuse of credit card charges, misuse of vacation and sick pay, missing checks, missing invoices and statements for expenses and services and failure to pay state and federal unemployment taxes,” said Karen DeVon, a Tucson-based accountant who was hired by the fire district to conduct a review of the financial processes and procedure analysis of the district’s books. “And that’s just some of the problems.”
At a Tuesday board meeting, interim Fire Chief Charles Balke outlined the list of bookkeeping problems the accountant uncovered for the year 2004. Following Balke’s report, a silence hung over the room as board members digested some of the more troubling points.
DeVon is now in the process of conducting similar reviews for 2005 and 2006.
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After investigating all three years, she will compile a final report that the fire district plans to submit to the state Attorney General’s Office.
“Remember, this is just a preliminary review of the books, it’s not a final report,” Balke reminded the board following his presentation. “After the accountant has time to research some of these items, hopefully we’ll have more answers and a more complete report.”
When Balke asked board members for questions or comments, Jerry Hopper responded, “I’m speechless.”
Former fire chief Therese Williamson oversaw the fire district’s bookkeeping during the years in question. According to DeVon, an audit was conducted every year by a certified public accountant out of Willcox, but it was nothing more than a spot check of different items.
“The annual audit is to verify that the financial statement is reliable,” DeVon said. “What I’m going through now is a much more detailed internal audit, an accounting procedure analysis. I’m trying to catch everything that I see as questionable.”
But Williamson said a financial review of the fire district’s books was conducted every year that she was responsible for the bookkeeping.
“This review is required by law and was submitted to the board to look over,” she said. “Nothing wrong was ever discovered. The last review that I was involved with was for 2005 to 2006 year. Like all the others, it was presented to the board and there was nothing wrong with my bookkeeping.”
In his presentation to the board, Balke discussed a number of problems that DeVon discovered, including overpayment of sick leave and vacation pay, which has resulted in a deficit for that particular account.
“Some employees were drawing more sick leave and vacation pay than was allotted,” Balke said. “In other words, sick leave and vacation payments were being made even though there was zero or negative hours in the available allotment.”
Because of missing checks and invoices, it’s impossible to track some of the district’s financial transactions.
Williamson claims that in the 15 years she was overseeing the fire district’s bookkeeping, none of these problems were ever mentioned, even when the books were reviewed by an outside accountant. Failure to pay state and federal unemployment taxes in past years is another problem the district is now contending with. “Right now they’re having to pay the Department of Economic Security for claims made by terminated employees,” DeVon said.
As DeVon continues to investigate the district’s accounts, Balke is hoping there will be more answers to some of the items in question. “But the way the files were kept, it raises a lot of questions about how financial transactions transpired, at least in 2004,” Balke said. “Files were mixed and matched instead of being topic oriented, which would have made things much easier to track.”
DANA COLE can be reached at 515-4618 or dana.cole@svherald.com.
To RPS wrote on Nov 6, 2007 11:37 PM: