Logan County Board Finance Committee Meeting
To Audit or Not to Audit

 

[October 10, 2024] 

On Tuesday, October 8th, the Finance Committee of the Logan County Board met for their monthly meeting. The meeting was held starting at 5:45 pm in the Blue Room at the Logan County Safety Complex. In attendance were chairman Dale Nelson, vice chairman Keenan Leesman, Jr Glenn, and Joseph Kuhlman. Members not in attendance included Emily Davenport and Bob Sanders. Board members Michael DeRoss and Jim Wessbecher were also in attendance, though they are not members of this committee.

The meeting kicked off with the usual attendance and approval of minutes. After, the committee fairly quickly jumped into new business, since not much was said about old business. The first item on the agenda for new business was a tax sale for Leonard Harmon. There was no discussion on this item, so the committee moved on to the next item.

The second item was a Community Action Partnership of Central Illinois (CAPCIL) request for funding. Their Lincoln building needs a new roof. To read more about this and why the committee decided to table it until next month, please read LDN’s other article on this meeting.

The next item on the list was a mid-year update on health insurance claims. Andrew Novaria and Nathan Whiteman were present to give the update on behalf of American Central Insurance. In short, these two shared that there are more “high utilizers” on the county’s health insurance policy now. Novaria and Whiteman explained that “high utilizers” are people who are frequently making claims. These are also people who Blue Cross Blue Shield determine are likely not going to start making less claims, meaning they have a continual need for something rather than a one-time event. This would be the difference between, say, an expensive monthly prescription versus an expensive one-time surgery. They shared that since there are more “high utilizers,” the plan could become more expensive next year if the number does not go down before then.

Once the health insurance update was given, the next item on the agenda was about a language change for per diem and mileage. This is to say the board members could be compensated for miles traveled to get to meetings as well as certain work done for the county outside of committee and board meetings. There is currently no language in the board’s policy addressing this, and so the plan is to create some and add it. DeRoss brought up the point that, if the language on this were to be changed in any way, the board would be required to give a 30 day notice before voting on it.

The next major item on the agenda regarded conducting a forensic audit on the courthouse restoration. This ended up being a fairly contentious issue that the committee went back and forth on for a while. Nelson shared that he was recommending that this be done. Nelson’s reasoning behind suggesting the audit was to learn. “Whatever learnings we can take out of that, we can make sure we implement when we start the Safety Complex,” Nelson said. Nelson also shared that the last time he looked into auditing services, he remembers it costing around $10,000.

Glenn spoke first, stating that he doesn’t “think it’s a terrible idea.” He stated that a forensic audit may show them a more efficient way to do things going forward. Bradley Hauge, the Logan County State’s Attorney, stated that the word forensic implies criminal activity. Nelson clarified that he used the word forensic to imply an audit that would go into more detail than a traditional audit, not meaning to imply that there was any illegal activity around the courthouse restoration. From there, the committee members dropped the word “forensic” from their discussion on the audit.

Penny Thomas, the Logan County Treasurer, then began to speak. She asked for clarification, asking if the committee members were referring to wanting all of the receipts and documentation for work that was done with the courthouse restoration only. When the board indicated that they did, she informed them that the county has auditors who make sure that all of the amounts are processed for the purposes of having a balanced budget. She also shared that these auditors will sometimes pull random numbers after the fact to ensure that things are being processed correctly for the budget.

Nelson stated that, at the beginning of the restoration, there were several issues of receipts not being turned in or processed correctly for the restoration. He also stated that there has been “a lot of turnover” from the beginning of the project to today. He cited an issue regarding having difficulty getting scaffolding receipts when he first joined the board as an example.

The committee members then discussed the feasibility of actually conducting an audit. What was brought up by several members was the fact that the receipts and paperwork needed for an auditor may not be easily accessible. DeRoss asked for clarification on this matter. “We’ve got the information… but we don’t have it all in the right place where it is easily understandable for either us or the public?” He then suggested a “master beautiful spreadsheet” to put all of the information on so it was organized and understandable. Nelson agreed that the lack of organization in this regard is part of the issue at present. It was stated that the board could go and find any invoice they wanted, so long as they knew which invoices they were looking for, rather than having everything together in one central location.

After this was established, more discussion began to occur on how the board could get all of their receipts and invoices in one place moving forward. Wessbecher offered to work on starting to search for all of the financial paperwork for the courthouse restoration. Thomas also brought up the point that the paperwork and receipts have to go to many different offices, such as hers, so they can be processed. Beside the treasury office, the paperwork would also have to go to the County Recorder and the finance office.

Sheriff Mark Landers then added that his department has been keeping track of the spending for the Safety Complex restoration. Kayla is the name of the person in his department who has been keeping track of all of the paperwork so far. It was then asked if Kayla could be given the responsibility of receiving financial paperwork and then distributing copies to all of the departments that need it. This way, the paperwork does not have to go from office to office, increasing the likelihood some may get misplaced.

After more discussion, Leesman added that a guide should be made as to how financial paperwork is to be handled. That way, the guide could be distributed to everyone to keep more disorganization from occurring in the future. Several of those in attendance agreed, stating they would meet after the meeting to discuss this in more detail.

The next major topic of discussion was in regards to the salary increase for Kati Newman, an Administrative Assistant in the county. This issue has been tossed back and forth from committee meetings to workshop meetings to regular board meetings since August when the idea was introduced by Davenport. The salary increase proposed would be for $10,000. Glenn stated his strong disapproval of doing this, stating that he has a problem with picking individual offices for raises.

Leesman introduced the idea of bringing in a Human Resources (HR) consultant to look at the possibility of giving salary increases based on merit. Since there is no current HR department, an outside consultant would have to be hired. While there was some back and forth on this issue, DeRoss brought up the question of what happens if the consultant determines everyone needs a raise. “Are we prepared for when they come back and say that everyone is grossly underpaid?”

It was decided to once more leave Newman’s salary increase on the agenda for next month, electing not to move it forward to the workshop meeting at this time.

The final major item on the agenda was the salary increase for non-union employees as well as paying for their health insurance in full. The committee decided they were going to propose this at the workshop meeting on Thursday. After this, Nelson had to leave. He was on call and was called in to work. Seeing as four members of the committee were needed for a quorum, the quorum was lost and the meeting was adjourned.

The committee meetings for Zoning and Economic Development as well as Executive and Personnel were not able to occur. It was stated that the items on the agenda for these meetings would be discussed at Thursday night’s workshop meeting. The items on the Zoning and Economic Development agenda included a countywide broadband initiative project, a wind farm update, “home occupations,” Section 6 floodplain regulations, a “proposed personal solar revision,” and Pivot Energy’s solar decommissioning plan. The items on the Executive and Personnel agenda included discussion of the guidelines for the Community Benefit Fund and the appointment of Cole Awe to the Broadwell Special Drainage district number 1.

[Matt Boutcher]