Legislative auditors flag long-standing uncorrected findings and warn statewide audits will be late

April Renfro, the audit director in the Legislative Services Office's legislative audits division, told the Joint Finance and Appropriation Committee on Jan. 7 that legislative audits are highlighting uncorrected findings across state agencies and that the office will likely miss statutory deadlines this year because of delayed financial statements.

Renfro said legislative statute (cited in the hearing as 67-7702) authorizes the office's scope, that the JFAC co-chairs release audit reports under Idaho code cited in the hearing as "67, 4 35," and that the auditors are responsible for the annual audit of the statewide annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR) and for the single-audit schedule of federal expenditures (SEFA).

The uncorrected-findings report the audits office issued this year covers four years of open findings; Renfro said roughly 70% of uncorrected findings are from the current reporting period and therefore have not yet had follow‑up testing, while about 30% represent longer-standing problems. She described typical finding types—internal‑control weaknesses, noncompliance with statutes or federal requirements, and substantive errors—and said some problems require only policy or training fixes while others have led to criminal investigations in rare cases.

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