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Auditors from the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury’s Office found deficiencies in the paperwork tracking the disposition of about eight Blount County Sheriff’s Office vehicles, according to the 2007 audit report released Thursday, but local officials say the problems have all been corrected.

During past months, members of some local citizens groups have claimed that about 25 vehicles were missing from the Sheriff’s Office inventory, compared to the number listed in previous audits. Auditors made no mention of actual missing vehicles in the report, but did find discrepancies in the separate inventories kept by the Accounting Department and the Sheriff’s Office.

“When we conducted interim audit test work, eight vehicles were on the Account Department’s inventory that had previously been removed from the Sheriff’s Department inventory,” the auditors wrote. “The Accounting Department subsequently obtained paperwork verifying the auctions/transfer of these vehicles and removed them from the inventory.”

County Finance Director Dave Bennett said that one problem had occurred when a Sheriff’s Office employee failed to verify the accuracy of the Account Department’s records.

“The meat of the finding was that there was an inventory listing we provided and an employee of the Sheriff’s Office signed off on that and basically just sent it back to us,” Bennett said.

The bookkeeping errors have been corrected, he said.

“As of September, the two (inventory lists) have been reconciled,” Bennett said.
Sheriff James Berrong said the audit results put an end to what he described as “false complaints.”

“This shows there is not a needle in the haystack,” Berrong said. “It was easily documented that the (vehicles) had been sold and hadn’t gotten deleted from the inventory list. The audit says about everything is in order. There were some paper trail deficiencies, but that has been cleared up.”

The auditors had these recommendations:

“Officials at the Sheriff’s Department should reconcile its inventory listing with the listing provided by the Accounting Department prior to signing the form as evidence of its accuracy. The Sheriff’s Department should file a notice of surplus vehicles with the Purchasing Department prior to the vehicles being sold, and the Accounting Department should review records of auctions sales to ensure that items sold have been removed from the Accounting Department’s inventory records.

“The Sheriff’s Department should ensure that acquisition forms are filed with the Accounting Department for all donated items. County policies should address items acquired through forfeited seizures to ensure that those items are added to the county’s capital assets records. The Accounting Department should ensure that all paid invoices are inspected for possible capital items. The Sheriff’s Department should reconcile its inventory listing with the annual inventory provided by the Accounting Department. The Account Department should document its annual random physical inspection of each department’s inventory.”

In a Dec. 21 letter to the members of the Blount County Commission, Bennett wrote that the Account Department had addressed all the findings made by the auditors.
County Commissioner David Graham, however, in a Wednesday letter to Bennett, wrote “to me, the audit ... raises many more questions than you attempt to answer.”

The only other finding in the audit report had to do with formal notes needing to be issued for internal financing that Blount County provided to the Industrial Development Board related to the DENSO expansion and the $350,000 allocated for a new animal shelter. Bennett said he was unaware at the time that the formal loan documents needed to be executed, but the County Commission voted at its December meeting to fix the problem.

Graham, in his letter, called that into question.

“I am perplexed why we acted upon this in the December meeting yet no mention of this possible audit finding was made,” he wrote.