Carson City Audit Committee receives update on city’s audit

The Carson City Audit Committee received an update from the city’s internal auditor, including the status of problems found during the current audit and recommendations for changes to the city’s policy and procedures.

Mark Steranka, partner, Moss Adams LLP, the auditor, also discussed Tuesday night the most recent calls to the city’s fraud, waste and abuse hotline.

For fiscal years 2014 and 2015, a comprehensive annual financial report found five anomalies each year and all have been corrected. They included instances of city employees from multiple departments not indicating federal programs on their timecards when entering hours related to those programs, late payroll submissions and allocating costs to a federal program not eligible for matching funds.

Among its review of the city’s internal controls, the auditor found 41 issues and seven have been resolved to date.

The findings still being worked on include: creating a citywide policy for overtime, updating the city’s grants administration policy, and instituting cash handling procedures.

To rectify the last issue, Moss Adams is performing an additional cash handling/revenue collection audit it plans to report to the committee at its next meeting.

The auditor is also conducting a payroll and purchasing card, or p-card, test it plans to report on to the committee in May.

The remaining unresolved findings are two out of 15 findings for community facility cost recovery and three out 27 in employee efficiency.

All findings have been addressed for fleet management efficiency and fleet utilization.

The committee Chairman Michael Bertrand requested the auditor add a validation step to the process so the committee could know when an item was completed and a set of findings ready to go before the Board of Supervisors.

The committee accepted the report.

All of the auditor’s findings can be found online at the city’s web site at http://carson.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=48947.

Moss Adams has five broad recommendations for changes to the city’s policy and procedures, including maximizing use of PolicyTech, the city’s software application.

“This is a best management practice. None of the other cities we audit use it and we’re now recommending it to them,” Steranka said.

The auditor also suggested the city implement annual training on policies and procedures and it move some items now found in municipal code, like the fee schedule, into its policies instead.

“It’s a lot more work to make changes to municipal code,” said Steranka.

Lori Bagwell, a committee member and Carson City supervisor, suggested the fee schedule still come before the Board of Supervisors for an annual review in order to allow public comment on it.

Sternaka said the city’s fraud, waste and abuse hotline had received four calls. Two were not city related and two were related to what Steranka called small works construction projects.

He said there was no evidence of fraud, waste or abuse in the projects, but problems with how data is tracked.

“In one case, the city has already made some adjustments to how they track information,” Steranka said. “In the second instance, there will be similar opportunities.”

The committee decided the chair should see each call to the hotline, just as another set of eyes on the problem, said Bertrand, and requested a routine report on the hotline, which is run by an outside contractor.

“We want to make sure the program is valuable,” Bagwell said, adding the public should know action was being taken.

The committee plans to meet May 17 when it will hear about the cash handling/revenue collection audit and other remaining work, and again on June 7 to discuss the goals of the audit program for 2016.