Auditors presenting results to the Cuyahoga County Audit Committee reported that the Clerk of Courts’ office held about $45 million in its bank account at the end of 2024, and approximately $26 million of that balance lacked a system-generated report tying funds to specific cases.

The audit, released Aug. 8, also identified approximately $3.7 million in unapplied funds across more than 50 deposits and cited several closed cases (87 in 2023 and 214 in 2024) that may still require billing or additional research because the case-management system lacks reporting capabilities to efficiently identify costs that exceed deposits.

Corey, the director of internal audit, told the committee the auditors advised the clerk’s office to work with its case-management vendor to develop system-generated reports that reconcile book balances to case-level detail. Auditors said four recommendations were implemented before the final report was issued.

Clerk’s-office representative Mike Smotek said the office regularly manages a large volume of pending cases and typically maintains a multi-million-dollar bank balance as cases proceed to finalization. "At any given time, we have approximately a 100,000 pending cases…we're always gonna have a balance of roughly 20 to $25,000,000 with the bank," Smotek told the committee, and he said the office is working with the court and prosecutor to transfer excess foreclosure funds to the treasurer’s office.

Committee members pressed for policies to address long-term unidentified or unapplied balances; auditors and clerk staff said the expectation is that, given time and resources to research deposits, unreconciled residuals should be resolved or remediated. The committee thanked the clerk’s representatives for their cooperation in the audit process.