Humboldt County Commission approved a plan of corrective action for five over-expenditures that were identified in in the Fiscal Year 2016 Annual Audit.
The commission reviewed the plan and held no discussion before they voted to approve the plan. The need for the plan was presented to the commission at their regular meeting on March 20 and the plan itself was up for review on March 27.
The plan, written by County Comptroller / Auditor Gina Rackley, contained a description of all five over-expenditures and an explanation of each.
One of the expenditures, $13,564 for “Health Function Mosquito Control” was labeled an input error, which Rackley said was not identified as a violation because it is “not significant as compared to the General Fund.” According to the entry, the item could have been corrected by a transfer between functions.
Three of the remaining four items were disbursements made from a large tax payment, which was not anticipated by the county. The items totaled $437,584. As explained previously, when the tax funds were received, the county had no choice but to distribute them to the appropriate funds. However, the funds were not budgeted, constituting an over-expenditure.
The final item was a payment made to the Humboldt County School District in the amount of $74,172. According to the letter, the funds were paid out as part of the Secure Rural Schools Act, which is a regular disbursement received by the county. According to Rackley, have of the received funds go to the Road Department, and the other half is given to the school The county does not budget for this item as they cannot predict the amount of funding that will be received. This particular item, according to the letter, does not constitute an audit violation, “as it is an automatic augment for a grant-in-aid.”
To address the other issues, the letter read, “the Comptroller’s office will review the budgets to actuals before the fiscal year end and present before the Commission appropriate budget adjustments as need[ed] to prevent any over expenditures.”
The letter was voted on and approved by three of the commissioners. Commissioners Ron Cerri and Jim French we not present.
