Greater transparency will mean more audit work, expense

Under new rule Taylor County will need to show all lease agreements as part of the annual audit report

The county’s audit may get a lot more complicated in future years as new accounting and reporting rules go into affect.

Members of the Taylor County Finance and Personnel committee on December 22 heard from a representative of the firm that conducts the annual audit about new changes that are coming for audit reports, which will translate into more work, and more expense for the county.

“Any time you get more transparency, it gets more complicated,” said Jon Trautman a CPA with Clifton-LarsonAllen, who does the county’s annual audit.

He reviewed the 2021 annual audit which shows a snapshot of the county’s finances as of December 31, 2021 and talked about what is coming for future auditing requirements.

Under federal rule changes, governments will need to start showing lease agreements in the audit reports both as assets and liabilities. In the past, these were accounted for, but not specifically called out as such.

Trautman said going through and ensuring the wording is correct on the leases will be time consuming and in other areas has involved getting the county’s attorneys involved.

“It gets fairly complex,” he said noting that in some areas land leases may have been done as handshake agreements, but now need to be recorded.

More work by the accountants means more cost to the county. Trautman gave the additional work involved as being one of the reasons for a significant price increase for the county for renewing a three-year contract for auditing services.

He said the majority of the price increase is a market adjustment. “It is catching up,” he said, explaining that the prices had been kept low as Schenck was purchased and consolidated into CLA.

The cost of next year’s audit will be $66,255. Brandl said that he probably did not budget enough for that line item.

In the audit business, Trautman reviewed the county’s audit which overall had few issues with the most significant being cash handling processes. This was due to the county switching to a new accounting software making cash reconciliations each month more challenging. He explained that there were no discrepancies, just that this needed to be addressed going forward.

Finance director Larry Brandl, noted the county had received little first-hand training with the new system and told committee members the issue was being addressed.

In other business, committee members:

  Approved using $40,000 of federal American Recovery Plan Act money to pay for an upgrade to the sheriff’s department dispatch system. The department is expected to return about $30,000 to the fund from radios being less than expected which would amount to about a $10,000 net change. The county has about $180,000 in the fund.

  Approved moving ahead with the replacement of a chiller for the courthouse and tapping into the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund (LATCF) grant funds to cover $98,000 of the cost with the remainder of the estimated $140,000 cost to come from maintenance department budget.

  Approved a new part time wage scale for casual employees including those working at the Winter Sports Area. This basically extends the 4% increase given to other employees to those positions as well.

  Approved implementing a background check policy to do background checks through the Wisconsin Department of Justice before job offers are made to all positions being hired. The cost is $10 per person with an additional cost for specific caregivers background checks that are required by the state for licensure. “The cost is pretty minimal,” Lewis said. It was noted that background checks can be a sensitive topic for employees and HR staff reminded committee members that just because someone has something in their background, it wouldn’t mean that they would not be good candidate for a position.

  Approved following a closed session discussion offering an extra five vacation days for a public health department applicant.

  Approved creation of a jail corporal position to provide additional oversight in the sheriff’s department. The position will be sent to Carlson Dettmann for classification. This does not increase the total number of employees in the department and any additional cost for the position will come from within the sheriff’s department existing budget.

  Approved updated job descriptions for the clinical services coordinator and protective services coordinator jobs.