Carter County Financial Management Committee discusses solutions to audit findings in special called meeting

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. (WJHL) – On Thursday, The Carter County Financial Management Committee held a special-called meeting to discuss solutions to audit findings after receiving their second consecutive poor audit .

The audit included 10 findings, six of which were reported in the 2022 audit report that had not been corrected.

At the special-called meeting, Finance Director Carolyn Watson went over corrective actions to those six findings.

For the maintenance of capital assets, solutions include officeholders and directors being more efficient in their inventory list.

“Making sure vehicles and equipment that are there are on the insurance, if they’re not and those vehicles and equipment are not there, then they need to be making sure that our finance department knows to remove those,” Patty Woodby, Carter County Mayor said.

For deficiencies in the budget operations, Mayor Woodby said they plan to hire the accounting firm, Blackburn, Childers & Steagall, CPAs to work with the finance department for the next few months.

“That is one where the citizens were concerned about the understated $11 million, let me reiterate there’s not money missing,” Woodby said. “There’s no fraud. There is just a misinterpretation in the line items that are overstated and understated.”

Woodby said they plan to follow recommendations from the comptroller’s office.

The Finance Department will also get help from the UT County Technical Assistance Service (CTAS).

There were also a few findings that Watson and the finance department did not have any corrective actions for yet.

“There were probably three of the findings that she [Watson] didn’t have a lot of clarification on,” Woodby said. “And so that is where she needs to really sit down with the auditors and myself included. We’re going to go over those three findings and make sure she’s clear on why they happened, how they can be corrected and how we can prevent them from happening in future.”

Woodby said they are dedicating these next few months to fixing these findings.

“We are already 3/4ths of the way into this FY [fiscal year],” Woodby said. “So we’ve got a little less than maybe two months to really work on getting these findings resolved and prevent new findings from happening for the auditors when they come back in Fall of the year to audit the FY 23-24 books in the ledger.”

Woodby said she has made it her number one priority to eliminate those six audit findings.

“So that the citizens of Carter County can be reassured that their money is being invested wisely.”

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