Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Parish Finance topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Livingston Parish finance staff outline January receipts, propose public budget presentations
Summary
Finance staff reviewed January financial statements, noted timing of property-tax receipts, described new ACH vendor payments for large disbursements and said an outside review of controls is in progress. Committee members asked staff to prepare public-facing, fund-by-fund budget presentations for future meetings.
At a Livingston Parish finance committee meeting, Finance staff reviewed the parish's January financial statements, described steps to reduce fraud risk on large payments and outlined plans for more public-facing budget presentations.
Finance staffer Gail Housley Walker said the packet presented to the committee covers the general fund summary, detailed departmental expenditures and remaining budgets for funds including administration, animal control and coroner. Housley Walker said ad valorem (property) tax receipts did not arrive in time for the January statements; the first property-tax check, $5,439,918, arrived in February and will be reflected in the February statements.
Why this matters: timing of major tax receipts affects the parish's cash flow and the committee asked for clearer, public explanations of how funds are held and spent.
Housley Walker and Finance Director Mickey McMoires told the committee that sales-tax figures appear inconsistently in the meeting record: one statement in the presentation says sales taxes collected and remitted for November (reported in January) totaled $22,226,634, while a later remark in the transcript refers to a January sales-tax deposit of $2,226,534. The record contains both numbers; staff did not resolve the discrepancy during the meeting.
Housley Walker said the parish has begun using automated clearing house (ACH) electronic payments for vendors where disbursements exceed $100,000 "as an additional measure to prevent fraud." She also said Falcon Winkler performed SAU testing around Feb. 3 and that the results were under review.
Committee member Mangus (identified in the record as the meeting mover) said the budget booklet is complex and asked staff to present future budget segments on-screen so residents can follow along online. Mangus said staff and the committee will pick funds to review one at a time (starting with the general fund) so community members can view focused presentations and later review the full packet if they wish.
Housley Walker said the presentation can include notes indicating which expenditures are mandated (for example, legislative and district-level obligations) and promised staff would work with committee leadership to prepare the materials.
The committee did not take a formal vote on the financial statements themselves during the meeting; members asked staff to prepare the public-facing presentations and to continue reviewing the outside-control testing report.
