YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

Report No. 2000-75
August 14, 2000

IMPORTANT:  The Missouri State Auditor is required by Missouri law to conduct audits only once every four years in counties, like Barton, which do not have a county auditor.  However, to assist such counties in meeting federal audit requirements, the State Auditor will also perform a financial and compliance audit of various county operating funds every two years.  This voluntary service to Missouri counties can only be provided when state auditing resources are available and does not interfere with the State Auditor’s constitutional responsibility of auditing state government.

Once every four years, the State Auditor’s statutory audit will cover additional areas of county operations, as well as the elected county officials,  as required by Missouri’s Constitution.  

This audit of Barton County included additional areas of county operations, as well as the elected county officials.  The following concerns were noted as part of the audit: 

• The county did not reconcile total amounts claimed for reimbursement to the Department of Transportation to their actual expenditures for the project.  Consequently, the county submitted claims for reimbursement exceeding actual costs incurred by $28,082 due to an error in preparing one of the reimbursement claims.

• The county has a written agreement with the Prosecuting Attorney outlining the portion of the Prosecuting Attorney’s office expenses to be paid by the county, however, the agreement does not address the secretaries’ salaries paid by the county.

• Several instances were noted where leave amounts reported on the employee’s time sheets did not agree to the amounts recorded on the employee’s leave record. In addition, some annual leave and compensatory time balances were not carried forward in the subsequent year.  Instances were noted where employee time sheets were not signed by the employee’s supervisor.

• Similarly noted in two previous audits, the Circuit Clerk had been unable to reconcile the open items (liabilities) and cash balance for the traffic account.  The unreconciled difference between the total open items balance and cash balance often fluctuated monthly.

Complete Audit Report