The report by Terry Sercer that was presented to the Commissioners this morning is available as a PDF from the link below. The report is addressed to the Bourbon County Commissioners and is dated October 10th.
Audit Report
Mr. Sercer said it was essentially the same report he gave to the Attorney General and the KBI.
Some notes from the report:
- The amount paid on the Treasurer’s property taxes are actually overpaid by $346.32 for the years 2005 and 2006. (Note: The treasurer has since paid her 2007 taxes as well).
- A number of tax payers on the payment plan over paid their interest by around $800.
- The biggest tax payer under paid by about $5,000.
- There was one tax payer where $1,130 was not collected in August when the property was offered for sale.
Thank you Mark. I believe this more than verifies, at the very minimum that the Bourbon County Treasurer needs to be “ousted” for incompetence. I wonder if the County Attorney plans to “oust” her or if the people will have to get together to get the job done? It’s like she didn’t have a clue about accounting in general. You just have to wonder what a mess the rest of the accounts are in and how many thousands they have cost the taxpayers. I don’t exactly understand why the report was dated October 10, 2011 and was not released to the ones that paid for it until October 24, 2011. Oh, yeah I do the infamous “stall”!
The date the report was prepared is likely not the date the Commissioners received it. Mr. Sercer mentioned that he had emailed the Commissioners the report, but it sounded like that had just been a few days ago.
Mark: I am confused by this statement in the “Recommendations” section: “In addition, 6% more do not have signed agreements with the taxpayers.” This follows the “88% of the plans currently in place are not making payments as required by the agreements.” I remember when you posted copies of the 142 (I think that was the number) that many were not signed so do you take this to mean that when the auditor looked, more of the contracts had been signed since you scanned them or that the 6% plus the 88% together made 94% not signed as I remember it was a significant number that had no signatures.
If I remember the discussion correctly, Mr. Sercer used these figures to point out that a number of the payment plans were either not in compliance (the 88%) or didn’t have signed agreements in the first place (the 6%). So he suggested that all but about 6% could probably be voided. Of course at this point, there isn’t really any advantage to canceling them because they can continue to make partial payments and the payment plans don’t (or shouldn’t) change the amount that people eventually need to pay.
I thought there were probably 50% or more unsigned contracts when you scanned them and that is why 6% did not make sense. I know I just went back and looked at about the first 20 of the scanned documents and only 2 or 3 were signed and if I remember right, that was pretty much the story for the entire group of documents. Also, I was confused that over 200 people were on the payment plan?
Mark: I am confused. How often is he Treasurers office audited and who receives said audit? One would think the nonpayment of taxes would have come out earlier if an audit had been performed. I understand the Treasurer paid 2005 and 2006 taxes. How late was she? How about her 2007 to 2010 taxes, are they paid? As to blaming software for the problem does one think for a minute that the IRS would accept that excuse from an individual tax payer?
I believe their is some type of audit conducted each year by Mr. Sercer. However, I don’t believe it is as in-depth or as specific. It also may look at aggregate amounts rather than individual tax payers.