By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A state audit is underway in Clinton County.
Auditors began reviewing financial and other records along with interviewing county officeholders and staff to prepare for the regularly scheduled audit.
Missouri State Auditor, Scott Fitzpatrick, says a full audit in 2018 disclosed some financial problems with Clinton County government. An audit of the Clinton County Commission and Clerk sparked by a whistleblower complaint in 2022 also resulted in a poor rating.
“For whatever reason, it’s a county that’s struggled to operate well in the past,” Fitzpatrick tells KFEQmmunity. “And so, we’ll be looking at some of the previous issues and try to determine if they’ve made progress on those and also try to determine if there are new problems that have come up.”
Fitzpatrick says an audit in 2018 disclosed real financial problems within county government.
“They were projected at the end of 2018 to only have a couple hundred dollars left in their General Revenue Fund,” Fitzpatrick says. “I don’t know how that ended up turning out for them, but I know at the time of that audit they were basically deficit spending and were on track to essentially run out of money.”
Fitzpatrick says auditors will review the weaknesses disclosed in the last audits and review current conditions as they prepare their findings.
“But at the end of the day, our job is to go in figure out if there are things they’re doing incorrectly, things that they’re doing that are inefficient, making them aware of it, and then trying to help them by providing them recommendations on how to fix that with the end goal of making the county government as effective and efficient as possible for the taxpayers of the county.”
Fitzpatrick says it will take between nine and 12 months to complete the audit.
The state Auditor’s office is required to audit each county government at least once every four years. Missouri has 114 counties.
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