Osage County commissioners press staff to tighten payment approvals after discovery of 19 months of unapproved charges

Commissioners at the Osage County Commission meeting on April 7 pressed staff for clearer controls and faster reconciliation after learning that about 19 months of credit-card and other electronic payments had been paid without prior board approval.

The dispute surfaced during a lengthy review of purchasing-card use and a plan to scan a banker’s box of hard-copy statements. Commissioner Cter said the revelation raised serious concerns about oversight: “We’ve had 19 months where our authority has been usurped with all of these credit cards being paid without brought to us for approval,” she said, referencing an amount she described in the meeting as roughly $750,000.

County Clerk Michelle Morris and other staff said they inherited a backlog of unpaid or unreconciled transactions when they began processing earlier records and described operational constraints. Morris told the commission she had prioritized bank reconciliations and called the situation a legacy “mess” that will take time to resolve. She and other staff proposed scanning existing paper records and sharing them with department heads so missing receipts could be located and voucher entries corrected.

Why it matters: Commissioners are the statutory final approvers of county claims, and several members said they will not allow routine payments to be processed before the board has seen supporting documentation. The board directed staff to develop—and circulate to department heads—a clear purchasing-card and pre-approval policy and to present a plan for processing historical statements in batches at future meetings.

What staff proposed: County staff (led in discussion by county legal/administrative staff) outlined three immediate steps for a card policy: 1) define allowed categories for card use (with travel-related food limited to per-diem or preapproved exceptions), 2) require receipts or a standardized “no-receipt” affidavit for every charge, and 3) adopt a tiered enforcement regime (written notice, temporary suspension, termination of card privileges) for violations. Staff also recommended that department heads bundle receipts and submit them to the clerk’s office so monthly statements can be matched to vouchers before the commission considers payment.

Backlog plan and practical steps: The clerk said a set of physical folders holds months of historic statements and receipts. Commissioners instructed staff to either scan the box in-house (which will take time) or obtain an outside scanning vendor for faster turnover, then upload the bundle to a shared drive and ask department heads to supplement missing documentation. Commissioners suggested processing the backlog in manageable groups—one quarter at a time or a small set of statements per meeting—until the commission catches up.

Legal and practical exceptions: Commissioners and counsel discussed payroll and similar recurring obligations that by practice are paid on schedule; the draft resolution staff circulated said payroll would continue to be paid on schedule, with payroll reports submitted to the board for approval within 14 days of each payroll date. For credit-card statements, the draft would prohibit payment of the monthly statement until the board has reviewed the statement and accompanying receipts; the draft allows modest individual transactions under $2,000 to be incurred prior to review but requires the statement and receipts to be presented for approval prior to charging the county account.

Next steps: The board asked staff to: expedite scanning or digitization of historic statements, circulate a draft purchasing-card policy for department-head feedback (with input from the county’s auditor and Miranda, who conducted an earlier card review), and prepare a schedule and packet for the next meeting that includes the first batch of historic statements for review. Commissioners also asked staff to identify recurring autopay and subscription vendors so the board can decide which should remain electronic and which should be converted to check or invoice payments that come to the board for approval.

The commission took no formal vote to retroactively disallow past payments; instead it approved a procedural path and directed staff to return with a formal policy and the first packet of historical statements for review.