Donnelsville Mayor Bob Cornwell said the village is working hard to make corrections.
“We are aware of the accounting problems,” Cornwell said in an email to the Springfield News-Sun. “Our fiscal officer is working with the state auditor’s office on correcting the issues. We are scheduled for our 2-year audit by the state auditor’s office this summer. We file our statements with the auditor’s office via the UAN software package and the issues are with our input into this system. We have received an extension from the state auditor’s office on these problems and the auditor’s office is coming in to train our fiscal officer on the correct way to input these items.”
“I might add also that our fiscal officer is new to the UAN system and this is definitely a training issue on correctly inputting the data,” Cornwell said.
As part of the audit of the Village of Donnelsville (Clark County) for Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 31, 2018, Faber declared the village “unauditable” after its fiscal officer for the village failed to provide financial statements required for an audit, according to the press release.
“On May 23, 2019, the Auditor’s office sent village officials a letter detailing their ‘unauditable’ status,” the release says. “The village has not turned in their 2017 and 2018 financial statements, due on March 1, 2019 and the village has not closed their financial records in a timely manner. Village payroll data is incomplete and the last bank reconciliation performed was for Sept. 2017.”
The auditor’s office has given Donnelsville a deadline to provide the information and says legal action is possible if the village fails to meet it.
“Within 90 days of the letter, the village must revise its financial records and provide the necessary data,” the release says. “Failure to bring accounts, records and reports to an auditable condition may result in legal action, including the possibility of the attorney general issuing village officials a subpoena to explain the condition of records. The attorney general may also file suit to compel the officials to prepare and/or produce the required information.”
The Auditor of State’s office is responsible for auditing more than 6,000 state and local government agencies. The office also provides financial services to local governments, investigates and prevents fraud in public agencies, and promotes transparency in government.
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