County audit issues clean opinion, flags repeat internal‑control weakness

Robinson Farmer Cox Associates presented Amelia County’s fiscal‑year‑end audit, issuing an unmodified opinion on the financial statements while calling out an internal‑control deficiency that auditors said repeated from the previous year.

Michael Lupton, partner in charge of the audit, told supervisors the audit team obtained sufficient and appropriate evidence to render a clean opinion under generally accepted accounting principles. He reported governmental fund totals of just under $25 million in assets and an unassigned general‑fund balance of about $8.4 million (ending general fund balance reported later at about $9.6 million after transfers). The general fund showed roughly $28.1 million in revenues and $24.7 million in expenditures for FY24, producing a revenues‑over‑expenditures result of about $3.4 million for the year.

At the same time, Lupton said the audit identified a significant deficiency in internal control related to material audit adjustments that the county required auditors to propose to present the statements in accordance with GAAP. “We rendered an unmodified opinion on the financial statements,” he said, then added that the presence of material audit adjustments is a reportable control deficiency the county should address. The auditor said that same deficiency appeared in last year’s report.

The single‑audit portion covering federal programs was completed for three programs that exceeded the federal threshold—public safety partnership and community policing grants, the remainder of ARPA/state‑local fiscal recovery funds, and the special‑education cluster—and Lupton reported no compliance issues noted in the single audit tests.

Lupton also reviewed enterprise activity for the sanitary district, which showed operating revenues of about $624,000 and operating expenses of about $869,000 (including roughly $207,000 in depreciation), creating an operating loss that he said merits monitoring and possible corrective action.

Next steps: County management and finance staff were directed to work with auditors to address recurring material‑adjustment issues and to continue strengthening internal controls so repeating deficiencies do not persist.