Kanawha County’s annual audit will be delayed due to the transfer of some work to a third-party accounting firm, and it could affect the county’s bond interest rates.
County commissioners discussed the delay at Wednesday night’s Commission meeting.
Brett Burns with Perry and Associates CPAs, an Ohio-based accounting firm, said last year’s audit report covering Fiscal Year 2023 was “not so great.â€
According to the report, available at Kanawha.us under the Commission Transparency section of the website, Perry and Associates said the county had issues with their procedures relating to leases and information technology subscriptions, and with the type of account used for the Shawnee Sports Complex.
The audit also notes that the “County did not have controls in place to ensure that financial statements were prepared timely and accurately in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.â€
The audit shows planned corrective action by the county, mostly to improve the preparation of financial statements.
Jeremy Young, county manager, told the Gazette-Mail that the county hired a third-party firm to prepare the financial statements.
“With this change and due to the size of our County, there is a significant amount of time required to transition this work to an outside firm, resulting in the need to file for an extension,†Young said in an email.
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The outside firm is Suttle & Stalnaker of ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä. They were retained last fall, Commission President Ben Salango said.
An employee with the County Clerk’s Office was working on this issue, but the employee is no longer employed by the County, Salango said.
Burns said the financial statements from Suttle & Stalnaker were not as usable as Perry & Associates needed them to be. However, he said they were better.
Suttle & Stalnaker are working to fix the statements, Salango said.
According to a document submitted to the Commission, the firm said a related file was corrupted on March 25.
The audit was due at the end of March. Burns said he hopes to have it complete by the end of April. The extension could potentially affect the county’s interest rates on future bonds, Burns said. This delinquency will be removed from the county’s record after they submit two clean, on-time reports.
Salango said the county will consider whether there is another third-party consultant that could be retained to correct the county’s financial statements.
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