State questions Grant County reports

EPHRATA — Aging computers and software led to Grant County financial reports being questioned by the state auditor’s office.

During a routine state audit for 2007, the state found “significant” errors with an initial report to the state from Grant County. State auditors cited issues with the amount of money reported for the Fair and Park Construction fund, the amount of revenue reported for the Emergency Communications tax and property tax and bond payments.

Grant County Auditor Bill Varney said most of these errors revolved around having separate computer systems, adding the public works’ computer system is roughly 30 years old.

“Some of the things that were from the other system just weren’t correct,” he said. “We review their expenditures, but the accountant up there has all the statements. When they come and audit, they have to audit the two systems. If something isn’t quite correct, we have to find out where the issue is. Those are where we run into problems trying to combine the two systems all of the time.”

Varney said the age of the software leads to errors in how finances are reported. As an example, the accountant reviewing records can’t adjust numbers in previous months to correct any mistakes.

The county hopes to integrate the old accounting system into a new county accounting program by 2010, according to the county’s written response to the state.

“We’re working on it,” Varney said. “We’ve been working on it for a couple of years. Hopefully by Jan. 1 it we’ll be on the same system … The computer systems will generate reports for you to check. If there’s only one system, there’s less chance for these issues to come up then if you’re trying to combine two sets of books into one.”

Grant County Commissioner Richard Stevens said the county receives this finding every year, saying it wasn’t anything new.

“We’d love to have (the new software) operational now. We’re hoping to have it operational by 2010,” he said.

There also were some issues with how the county reported interest from bond payments, according to the findings.

Bonds are a new item for the county’s auditor’s office, Varney said.