Auditor says La Porte received a clean FY2025 audit; no material weaknesses reported

Paula Lau, presenting on behalf of the audit firm transcribed as Patella Brown Hill, told the Fiscal Affairs Committee that the auditors rendered an unmodified opinion on the city’s FY2025 financial statements and reported no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies.

"We were able to render an unmodified opinion," Lau said, describing that opinion as the highest level auditors can issue and adding that the single-audit over federal awards likewise produced a clean result. She told the committee the single-audit is required when a government spends more than $1,000,000 in federal awards and that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) spending was the largest federal program reviewed this year.

Lau walked the committee through the annual comprehensive financial report and related schedules. The auditor said the general fund had nearly $100,000,000 in total fund balance with approximately $96,000,000 reported as unassigned fund balance and an overall reported increase in fund balance of about $13,800,000 for the year. The transcript includes a line listing general fund expenditures that appears garbled in the record and is not legible in the transcript; that figure is therefore not reported here as an exact amount.

The auditor also noted enterprise and proprietary funds such as the utility fund and the La Porte Area Water Authority were in positive net position at year end. The auditor and staff emphasized there were no findings to bring to the committee’s attention from either the financial-statement audit or the single-audit.

The auditor's presentation concluded with an offer to answer additional questions about disclosure notes, encumbrances, and fund accounting. Committee members followed with technical questions about how encumbrances and leftover contingencies are shown and handled in the city's fund reports.