- Commissioners review financial statements with auditors
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By Rebecca Dopp
Times-News Correspondent
Special Service District #2 was recently audited by Hawkins, Cloward and Simister, Certified Public Accountants, Inc. and Denton Alexander, CPA, and Jeremy Wilkey, CPA, came before the county commissioners to review the financial statements and discuss the findings that the district will have to rectify. The auditor's report expresses an unqualified opinion on these financial statements.
Alexander said he appreciated working with the county and said many people were instrumental in obtaining the information for the financial statements.
"We've had a lot of different sets of eyes look at the financial statements and the operations of the county," he said. "That's been a good thing, certainly for us, as well as the county, to get a fresh look at things."
Special Service District #2 receives mineral lease monies from the State of Utah and expends these funds for specific purposes in accordance with Utah law and Juab County ordinances.
The statement of Net Assets and the statement of Activities provide information about the District as a whole, provide information about the activities of the District, and present a longer-term view of the finances of the District. The statement tells how the activities of the District are financed. It also provides more detail than the government-wide statements by providing information about the District's most significant funds. The remaining statements provide financial information concerning the District and its activities.
The auditors found three areas that they identified as immaterial non-compliance with state laws.
"As you all likely know," Alexander said, "there was a change in the state auditor's office very recently. John Dougall, the new state auditor, required a certain change in focus in terms of what the independent auditors would look at as it comes to state compliance issues. As a result of that, there were some new things not previously encountered, or not previously focused on, that are the subject of the three bullet points on the [auditor's] letter."
The first finding Alexander pointed out said that state law requires there be no expenditures of governmental funds in excess of what was approved in a budget setting. He said in 2013 the expenditures exceeded the budget slightly.
Wilkey pointed out that that finding was not listed in the supplementary information.
Alexander said initially when they had looked at the expenditures, there was a year-end budget amendment that made the budgeted expenditures equal to the final expenditures.
"That comment of actual expenditures exceeding budgeted expenditures...as we corrected that, your budget expenditures are exactly equal to the actual expenditures. You did a great job with respect to amending the budget at the end of the year."
He said they would take that finding off the report and apologized for the misstatement and misunderstanding.
Another finding found that the District's board needed to review budgetary operating financial statements at least quarterly. This had not been occurring. State statute UCA 17B-1-638 requires this action.
A third finding found that the District had not made a formal adoption of the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) or appointed a records officer to work with Utah Archives.
"I think historically, in regards to District 2, it's been their unstated policy that when a GRAMA request comes up, or a GRAMA issue, they defer to what the county's GRAMA policy is as opposed to having a stated, adopted policy of their own."
State statute requires that the District adopts its own policy and appoints a records officer.
A finding that was not discussed was that the District did not post copies of its meeting minutes to the Utah Public Notice website and had not documented that the Board had participated in training on the Open and Public Meetings Act. The District's response was that they concurred with the finding and would implement the recommendation.
Overall, SSD #2 was in good shape. The commission approved the financial statements for the District.
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