FE release

By jeanne starmack

starmack@vindy.com

campbell

The city’s release from state-mandated fiscal emergency is close, but don’t break out the cigars yet.

“I don’t know,” city finance director Mike Evanson said Tuesday. “Each time I think we’re almost there, another level of review takes place.”

“They make sure everything they identified as a deficiency is corrected and incorporated in our operations,” he continued, adding that the state wants to make sure the city does not go back to the fiscal-emergency status it’s been in since 2004.

Losses of industry and tax base were blamed for the crisis. But the auditor’s office also pointed to accounting deficiencies and a lack of operating procedures and policies that had to be corrected before it would release the city.

City officials resolved a long list of those deficiencies last year. Evanson also reconciled a backlog of bank statements to the city’s books. The reconciliations had accumulated under a previous finance director.

The city asked the state for release from fiscal emergency in December.

Evanson said the state, which has been reviewing whether to release the city since January, also wants to see a copy of the city’s latest audit, which was filed with state and federal governments at midnight Friday.

“We are expecting that any time,” he said.