Audit committee directs staff to draft tighter county credit-card purchasing policy

The Grand County audit committee voted unanimously to ask staff to draft a tighter credit-card purchasing policy and to provide an inventory of credit cards, their limits and 12 months of total charges ahead of consideration at the April 21 commission meeting.

Committee members identified a control gap in which credit-card purchases are reviewed only up to the director level. "There's this giant floodgate that's out here that no one's paying attention to," said a committee member, urging broader oversight beyond director-level review. The chair estimated the county has "probably 25 of them minimum, if not more," underscoring the scale of card use.

Quinn Hall, the county's deputy administrator, told the committee the county is constrained by an aggregate credit limit across all cards and that staff is working with the bank to raise that limit. "Each credit card does have its limit," Hall said, "but the county is only allowed to have throughout all of their credit cards, there is a limit that all of those credit cards can go to." Julian, representing the internal-audit perspective, added that even well-intended use can lead to mistakes and recommended layered controls and random sampling by internal audit.

Staff and committee members discussed concrete guardrails to include in the draft: clearer thresholds for when a purchase requires a purchase order (examples discussed included $3,000 and $5,000), use of vendor charge accounts for routine box-store purchases, split-coding receipts into line items, and limits or rules on gratuities. Karen, a member of staff providing procurement guidance, said that "anything that was over $3,000, for example, would require an approved purchase order prior to the purchase," and urged that credit cards be the exception for immediate, small needs.

Committee members also raised competitive-purchasing safeguards and the risk of order-splitting (breaking a large purchase into multiple small transactions to avoid thresholds). Julian suggested a three-tiered review (employee/supervisor, director, commission administration) with internal-audit sampling as a third line of control.

Motion and vote: The committee recorded a motion (identified in the record as "Motion by Martinez") directing Julian and Karen to provide a draft credit-card purchasing policy for possible adoption on April 21 and asking commission administration to provide the number of county credit cards, cardholder positions, individual card limits and the county's total credit limit; the motion was seconded and approved by voice vote, recorded in the minutes as unanimous.

What comes next: Committee members asked staff to return a draft policy and an inventory and 12-month summary of charges so commissioners can review and provide input before the commission considers adoption. Committee members discussed using a short workshop or collaborative document to refine the draft before placing it on the commission agenda.