Auditors report FY24 financial statements clean; governance letter lists control and timing findings

Sandy Cook, signing director with CliftonLarsonAllen, presented a high-level summary of Champaign County's FY24 audit on July 23. The auditors issued an unmodified (clean) opinion on the county's financial statements and on the uniform grant-guidance report covering major federal programs; they reported a clean opinion for the three major programs tested (ARPA, Head Start and highway planning).

Cook said the auditors identified four findings in the government-auditing-standards report: revenue reconciliation discrepancies, timing of bank reconciliations, audit delays attributable to late availability of supporting documents, and related timing issues. The governance communication letter also discussed implementation of GASB 101 (compensated-absence reporting) and noted uncorrected and corrected audit adjustments related to IMRF pension and other items.

"The financial statements received an unmodified or clean opinion," Cook said, and added that while there were findings, the single-audit major-program testing did not produce reportable compliance issues for those programs. She told the board the auditors tested about $18,000,000 in expenditures for three major programs and that total federal expenditures were just under $32,000,000. Board members asked follow-up questions about who will lead reconciliations going forward; staff said county finance will be responsible for FY25 audit preparation and that the department will provide updates to the board as available.