Bexar County accepts FY2024 financial report, single audit after CLA presentation

CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA) told the Bexar County Commissioners Court on April 29 that the county—arned an unmodified (clean) opinion on its FY2024 annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR) and on the single-audit engagement covering federal and state awards. County Auditor Leo Caldera introduced the audit team and thanked staff for lengthy year-end work. "We are here today to present the results of the county's audit for the fiscal year ended 09/30/2024," CLA engagement partner Bhakti Patel said during the presentation.

The auditors said they issued a clean opinion on the financial statements and did not identify material noncompliance related to the major federal or state programs they tested. Joel Perez, a CLA principal, told the court the clean opinion reflected "a clean bill of health" for the financial statements but noted the auditors identified a material weakness and a significant deficiency in internal controls and additional, less severe findings in the schedule of findings and questioned costs for federal awards. Perez and Patel said some of the items were documentation or timing issues that management has already begun to address.

The audit presentation emphasized two practical points for commissioners: (1) the county—xpended roughly $176 million in federal and state grant funds in the audited year and (2) the scope and complexity of reporting have grown substantially in recent years. Caldera told the court that since his appointment in 2019 the county's grant receipts increased by about $109 million and the overall budget grew by roughly $1.1 billion, which increases accounting and reporting workload. He also thanked CLA for assigning a large team (CLA reported it deployed 37 personnel to the engagement) and county staff for extended hours to meet reporting timelines.

CLA highlighted specific next steps: management-corrective action plans were prepared for the findings, auditors will follow up next year to confirm remediation, and the county will continue improving cross-department reporting to eliminate timing and reporting gaps the auditors flagged. Perez said the documentation gaps did not change the auditors bility to issue an unmodified opinion because management corrected many of the adjustments during the audit.

Commissioners asked for clarity on the significance of the control findings and whether they would affect future grant funding. Perez and Caldera told the court the issues were primarily documentation and reporting timing items that did not affect compliance outcomes on tested grants and were not expected to jeopardize federal or state awards. The court voted to accept the ACFR, single-audit report and governance letter; the motion was seconded and carried.

The audit materials and governance letter are now part of the public record. Caldera and CLA encouraged continued cross-office coordination to implement the corrective actions outlined in the auditors' schedule of findings.