Several issues were documented in the recent state audit of the Rowan County Fiscal Court. Local officials said the report was about what was expected after recent events. Last year officials within the Rowan Fiscal Court discovered that an employee had been writing herself checks from county accounts.
Rowan County Judge Executive Harry Clark said although the issue was found internally and action was taken, it’s the job of state auditors to make a record.
“The system works. You know, the auditors are paid to come in and make sure that the taxpayers’ dollars are going where they need to go and so they did that,” said Clark. “They came in and they looked, of course in my case we’d already fixed it. But we could have fixed it and if it’s never showed up in an audit, then somewhere 20 years down the road somebody says ‘Oh yeah, they covered that up’. Well, no, it was in an audit, there’s paper trails with it.”
Clark said within a week of discovering the checks, controls were implemented to prevent such a thing happening again. The employee found writing the checks was terminated and in February was arraigned on criminal charges.
The state audit also found the Rowan County Jailer paid jail employees to teach therapy classes, but did not process that payment through payroll, a requirement the jailer was not aware of. The jailer responded, saying future payments to employees teaching therapy will be processed through the clerk’s office with payroll deductions. Another issue regarded the purchase of nicotine pouches that were not bid separately from e-cigarettes.
“You’re required to bid it and they didn’t. And so, it’s a simple fix. We’ll just make sure we bid it each time,” said Clark.
The Jailer said the nicotine pouches will be bid this month.
