Revelations of mismanagement continue to plague Goochland County as an ongoing audit for fiscal 2009 reports more than 40 errors spanning multiple years.

Rob Churchman of KPMG, an auditing firm hired by the county last May, presented an update to the Board of Supervisors last week, disclosing that errors, in some cases totaling millions of dollars, were the result of flawed reporting practices and a lack of checks and balances.

County Administrator Rebecca T. Dickson said the county has been working closely with KPMG throughout the auditing process, and was not surprised by the report.

“The bottom line is there is no money missing in the coffers,” said Dickson. “What are missing are internal controls and procedures.”

Dickson said that there will be action plans created in response to each of the issues identified in the final audit report, scheduled to be presented May 4.

So far the audit has discovered accounting mistakes throughout the county, including problems related to governmental activities, the school board, the economic development authority and the county’s utilities department and sanitary districts.

The most glaring errors involve assets and debts that were reported inaccurately, or completely omitted.

In the case of governmental activities, nearly $3.5 million worth of contractual liabilities related to an economic -development agreement in 2001 had never been recorded.

Disposed capital assets, such as county-owned vehicles that were no longer operable, were recorded, while viable assets still in use were not; such miscalculations totaled almost $1.1 million.

Auditors also discovered that more than $4.1 million worth of capital debt issued in 2003 for the Tuckahoe Creek Service District was not recorded. Churchman pointed out that that unrecorded debt was offset by unrecorded capital assets, including $3.4 million in office part infrastructure.

Also related to the Tuckahoe Creek Service District was $343,000 in wastewater capacity rights and liability, related to an agreement with the City of Richmond entered into in 2002, which had never been recorded.

The countywide audit was requested by the Board of Supervisors last year after an investigation of the county’s utilities department revealed almost $200,000 in undeposited checks from fiscal years 2007 and 2008.  A subsequent forensic audit found that unremitted payments, as well as past due invoices, had been an ongoing problem in the department for years.

In a separate review last fall, the county’s treasurer’s office received a notice of noncompliance from the state’s auditor of public accounts after it failed to remit sheriff’s fees totaling $1,465 for fiscal year 2009; the fees were classified and deposited to a local account rather than to the state.

The treasurer’s office also waited up to four months to remit other fees, totaling $636.

“Misallocations do happen,” said Dickson, who said that County Treasurer Brenda S. Grubbs had quickly corrected the error. “As long as we have procedures to correct and identify them, that’s where we’re trying to head.”

Dickson said that one anticipated procedure will be a schedule of regularly evaluating and rotating the external auditors hired by the county.

This year’s audit found that the county had, in past years, failed to take ownership of its financial reporting process, relying instead on its former auditor, Robinson, Farmer, Cox Associates, to compile its annual financial statements.

“We should have changed auditors years ago,” said District 4 Supervisor Malvern “Rudy” Butler, noting that the previous firm had performed the county’s audits for more than a decade.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing them go back to when the TCSD started, to audit all those years to now,” Butler said. “I think we need to know, where did it start?”

District 3 Supervisor Ned S. Creasey agreed.

“This all needs to get out there now because if not, it will be dribbling out for how long a period of time, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve got to do the right thing.”

Creasey also fears that the county’s fiscal integrity could be in jeopardy.

Dickson says that she is already communicating with the county’s lenders to ease concerns.

“I have been in touch with VRA (Virginia Resources Authority), our biggest lender,” she said. “Once the results are done, and we’ve got the documents in the shape they should be in, then the plan going forward will be, what do you look like going forward, to insure this doesn’t happen again?”

In the meantime, “those that made this mess should be held accountable,” said long-term resident Ann James.

“People are furious—I’ve been saying this for years, to come to these board meetings, to make this their business,” said James. “Now they wish they had; it’s hit them in the pocketbook.”