Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Fiscal Oversight topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Auditor, lawmakers discuss voucher exceptions and sales-tax trends; committee moves abstract audit
Summary
Budget & Finance members questioned auditing and voucher-approval processes; the auditor estimated taking exception to about 10% of vouchers and said roughly 5% are corrected with additional documentation; the committee also received a sales-tax update showing the first 0.25 share down ~8% while the second 0.25 is up ~23% year over year.
Budget & Finance convened and members pressed the auditor about how exceptions to vouchers are handled and whether flagged items can nonetheless be paid. A member asked, "If Marco sees something... what is the process like? If Marco sees something that's not that shouldn't be paid, and what is the process?" (speaker 4). The auditor (speaker 7) explained that he returns vouchers to the department for clarification and sometimes receives additional documentation; he estimated, "I probably take exception to 10% of the vouchers that come through," adding that about half of those exceptions ("about 5%") are rectified by additional documentation.
The committee also received a sales-tax update: staff reported the first 0.25 sales-tax piece was down about 8% ("doing a little over 1,000,000 dollars"), while the second 0.25 has recovered and is about 23% above the prior year. Committee members discussed whether procurement or signature-override policies allow payments to proceed despite auditor exceptions and asked staff to bring procurement and auditing policies up to date.
