External auditors give city an unmodified opinion; note one payroll control finding

Chester Moyer, audit partner with Reuben Brown, told the Finance Committee the firm issued an unmodified opinion on the City of Independence’s financial statements as of June 30, 2024. "We issued a clean opinion or an unmodified opinion, and that's the highest level of opinion that we give as auditors," Moyer said.

Moyer said the auditors found no uncorrected misstatements and no difficulties or disagreements with management during the audit. He identified one control finding from payroll testing: one instance (out of 40 tested) where an employee had not been paid holiday pay; management corrected the omission and included the correction in its corrective-action plan.

Moyer also described other audit observations and recommendations: improving reconciliation frequency for utility billing batches, completing asset-depreciation work and the fixed-assets project plan, and continuing efforts to shorten the time to close the city’s financial statements. He praised the finance staff’s work and noted the importance of distributing institutional knowledge across more staff to reduce concentration risk for the finance director role.

Moyer said the federal-awards portion of the audit is still in process and that auditors have identified three programs for testing this year: DWI enforcement, the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, and the highway safety cluster. He reported the federal-audit work was about 95% complete with no findings so far and a March 31 deadline for completion.

Ending: Committee members thanked Moyer and the finance staff for the clean audit and discussed how audit results contribute to the city’s credit profile and readiness for future bond issuances.