Finally complies after 60 days
Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
After months of no word on the forensic audit that the Jefferson County Commission requested that a CPA firm conduct of the Clerk of Court Office’s financial records, the issue resurfaced last week.
New County Attorney Heather Encinosa reported to the board on Thursday evening, July 7, that her office had reached out to Clerk of Court Kirk Reams and his counsel a few days earlier about the long-overdue documents and the clerk had complied with the request.
Encinosa said her office had forwarded the four large documents received from the clerk to the auditors for review.
“The auditors need to go through the documents and verify what, if anything, is missing,” Encinosa said. “At which point, we can follow up with the clerk in order to get any remaining records.”
Although seemingly dormant on the surface since the matter was referred to a special auditor in early April, things apparently have been happening – or not happening, as may be the case – behind the scenes.
On June 17, Commissioner Betsy Barfield, whom the board tasked with keeping tabs on the audit’s progress, reported that the clerk had been stonewalling the auditor’s requests for information. She said that requests for documentation that the auditor had made on May 9, and again on May 23, had gone ignored.
County Attorney Scott Shirley, who was then still advising the board, called the time lapse unreasonable.
“Records must be produced within a reasonable amount of time,” Shirley said. “There is no hard and fast timeline in Florida law. But I would say that this amount of time transpiring without a response is not reasonable.”
At the least, Shirley said, an obligation existed on the part of the clerk to offer an explanation for why the information wasn’t forthcoming.
“If this continues, stonewalling or whatever you want to call it, there is an opportunity to file an action under Florida law, under the Public Records Act, to require that the documents be provided and the attorney’s fee be reimbursed to the county, if it comes to that,” Shirley said.
Commissioner Chris Tuten was for moving forward with legal action if the auditor had not received the requested documentation by the board’s next meeting in July.
“I want to get this behind us one way or the other,” Tuten said. “This is not productive. July 7 will be 60 days. That’s more than enough time. If we don’t have something by then, we need to move forward with something else.”
Commissioner Stephen Walker agreed.
“This is ridiculous that this has gone on this long,” Walker said.
The board instructed Encinosa, who was attending the meeting in preparation for soon assuming Shirley’s duties, to reach out to the clerk.
Barfield’s report also included the p-cards, whose alleged misuse likewise roiled commission meetings earlier this year and resulted in a tightening of the policy governing the uses and types of purchases allowed under the county-issued card.
She noted that the board had already reviewed three years worth of the p-card statements of all accounts, particularly the clerk’s office, and had more or less resolved the questionable expenditures.
“But there are other expenditures that I would question and I want to know how you want to handle it,” Barfield said.
She asked direction from the board as to whether it wanted to receive the p-card statements in hard copy with the questionable expenditures highlighted, or in digital format?
When she called them questionable expenditures, Barfield said, she meant that they were charges to a cellphone company and the like. Odds and ends that needed to be resolved, she said.
“The way I look at it is that this is our money that’s being spent and we give the clerk money for his budget,” Barfield said. “I would like to know why these expenditures weren’t reimbursed to us. He might have a good reason, I don’t know. But certainly I want you the board to lay eyes on them and try to figure what these expenditures are or ask the clerk what they are.”
At Shirley ‘s suggestion, it was the board’s decision to have materials download onto a dropbox that all could access for review and later public discussion.
Barfield’s last piece of information was to inform the board that the clerk had requested a new p-card on his office’s account. Earlier in the year, the board asked Reams to relinquish his county-issued p-card because of alleged abuses.
“I’m just laying this out there,” Barfield said. “I don’t know who reviews these new expenditures. But certainly the board gives the clerk money to operate and what he does with this money is something that’s within our purview because we are the overarching organization over the county. I’m sure the clerk will argue that that’s completely different, but I’m just letting you know that there’s a brand new p-card out there that the clerk requested and I don’t know who’s reviewing these expenditures. That would be a question that needs to be asked, and if it’s a public ask, I don’t know how the attorneys are going to handle it. So if you want to give that some thought, attorneys, we would love to hear what you have to say about it.”
The county is paying $25,000 to the CPA firm of Thomas Ferguson to conduct the forensic audit of the clerk’s office, a move that Reams’ attorney challenged, arguing that the commission lacked the statutory authority to conduct such an audit of a constitutional office.
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