Interim County Administrator Douglas Eaves gave audit progress during the December 10 meeting of the Board of Commissioners. “Our audit is 99.9% completed.”

Eaves gave the deadline. “Our fiscal year ends on June 31 and we’re required to have the audit submitted to the Department of Audits and Accounts by December 31.”

He gave the remaining portion of the audit. “The auditors could not complete a section on agency funds, and the agency funds are the trust funds that are held by the constitutional officers. The one in particular we have a problem with are the Clerk of Court funds.” He stated that the Clerk of Court was currently nine months behind on submission of the reports.

Eaves stated they had talked to the Clerk of Court, Cortisa Barthell, a couple of months prior, offering assistance from the finance director or outside accountants. “She said that she would handle it.”

He gave the auditor’s reaction to the delays. “The auditors tell me this is a very unusual situation. They’ve never seen one this far behind.”

The delays also effected the distribution of funds. Eaves told how while he did not have access to her account, he had checked with the bank representative to ensure that account was properly collateralized. “I did ensure with the bank that the amount of money that was growing her account was fully collateralized as required by State law.”

Eaves stated Barthell had given them a date for getting back on schedule. “She said she would have it done by January the 31st, was the deadline she gave us for getting caught up to date.”

He commented further. “I wasn’t here last year, but the auditors did tell me that at this time last year that she was three months behind.”

Eaves stated that the County could file an extension for their audit. “If we don’t do an extension, if we don’t file the audit, we go on that list, that means we don’t have access to State grant funds, we don’t have access to LMIG.” He stated any State money that comes to the County will be shut off until they come into compliance if they don’t file an extension. However, if an extension was filed, they would be able to have access to State funds, provided they only did it twice. Eaves detailed the situation. “The penalty for the audit extension is that you can’t do it two years in a row, and that’s going to be an issue, because next year, you have several issues going on. You have a new accounting firm, you have a new County Administrator, and you have three single audits because of the airport project that’s going to be taking place next year and close out of the two ARPA projects.”

After the County Commissioners meeting, Barthell gave an interview on the delays. “Towards the end of last year, my office actually underwent a system upgrade to our case management and financial system. And unfortunately, that conversion from my old system to my new system did not work as, as effectively and as efficiently as we would have liked it to have happened.”

Barthell stated that the conversion caused major issues in distributing funds from the Clerk of Court’s office on schedule. “It just kind of threw a lot of things out of loop, and has caused tremendous delays in me doing payouts.”

She stated that the problems occurred when the version was upgraded from Icon Delphi to Icon 360, operated by Catalyst. Barthell also noted that there were staffing changes within the company that provided the software, which she said limited customer support. “To be quite honest, the knowledge of the system was not as well as it was from the previous owner and management.”

Barthell stated help offered by the County would be ineffective. “They would need training to be able to go into my system.”

While other offices use Icon, Barthell stated that the clerk of court’s office had unique challenges. “I think we have two other offices in the County that also operate off of the Icon 360, but theirs are definitely not at the same capacity.”

Barthell gave an example. “I know juvenile court has Icon 360 which they’ve had some, a few years now. But when they started with their system, it was with the old management of Icon, and they started from not having a case management system at all.” She stated that the transition for her office came at a time when there was little customer support available from the company to make the transition.

She made a final comment to citizens. “I am definitely here and working diligently every day. I am very apologetic . . . to the County commissioners for the delay, but unfortunately it was something that was out of my control.”