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Youngstown audit released
YOUNGSTOWN
The city ended 2009 with deficits in four funds, doesn’t have a formal code of conduct, has a habit of paying bills without first determining whether money is available and a slew of technology problems, according to a state audit.
For the third-consecutive year, the audit doesn’t include a finding for recovery.
But the audit, released Thursday by the Ohio auditor’s office, has four noncompliance citations and 20 recommendations. Nearly all of them have been in annual audits of the city for several years.
It won’t get any better until the 2011 audit when Youngstown’s new computer financial-management system is fully implemented, said Kyle Miasek, the city’s deputy finance director.
Many of the noncompliance citations and recommendations in the 2009 audit will be in the 2010 report, he said.
“A lot of these areas will be corrected once [the auditor’s office] starts reviewing the 2011 audit,” Miasek said.
Overall, the city finance department is “doing a good job following” state-audit guidelines, he said, pointing to no findings for recovery.
“There’s no flags out there,” Miasek said.
The city ended 2008 with deficits in 16 funds.
It ended 2009 with deficits in four funds. The biggest shortfall was $1,030,081 in the police-levy fund. The audit states money from other funds were used to make up that deficit, which isn’t permitted under state law.
The city failed to properly certify that money was available before paying 85 percent of bills reviewed by the auditor.
The audit listed a number of policies that the city hasn’t implemented even though the problems have been brought to the attention of city officials in several prior audits.
Among them are a lack of a formal code of conduct listing unacceptable behavior and the consequences for such behavior, no credit-card policy for the city administration (city council and the municipal court have policies), and no cell-phone-use policy for city council and the clerk of courts.
Also, the city has a conflict-of-interest policy but doesn’t require any of its officials or employees to acknowledge they’ve read and understood it, according to the audit.
Among the technology deficiencies listed in the audit are the failures to have a data-processing recovery plan in case of an emergency, a long-range information-technology strategic plan, a computer-security policy and staff training on computer technology.