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Legislative Joint Auditing-Educational Institutions

June 1, 2023 ·1:30 PM ·Room 138 ·39:36
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 0:00
minutes. Anyone have any questions? We have a motion to adopt the minutes. Some brave soul make a motion to adopt the minutes. Second, the minutes are adopted. Thank you. And at this time, we'll review the reports. Mr.
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Speaker 7 0:28
Fink, go ahead. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today we have 123 educational reports for fiscal year 2022 to review. Of the 123 reports, 16 have reportable findings. There are two reports which were classified as fiscal distress, which are the Pine Bluff School District and the Lee County School District. Our current standing committee guidelines is to invite entity officials for deferred audit reports, reports with repeat findings, and reports of school districts currently classified as fiscal distress. And with that, we will begin with the audit report for Dermott School District, which was deferred from the May meeting. They had one finding, which was a repeat. The district did not obtain a performance bond for the purchase and installation of a security system as required by arkansas code and a similar finding was noted in the prior year audit and that concludes the findings for dermot school district i think we have
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 1:29
representatives from dermot if you're here if you'd like to take a seat at the end of the table please and folks just for your knowledge there was a communication breakdown and they did not receive information to be here at our last meeting so it was not their fault that they weren't here we've contacted them and they're here to address the issues if you would please introduce yourself just press a little button up there thank you thank you and you really have to hold those mics pretty close if you don't mind please but can you would you like to respond to the findings
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Unknown speaker 2:15
Yes, go ahead. If you'd like to respond to the findings.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 2:45
Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? You have a question? Representative Hodges?
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Speaker 24 3:15
I don't know if any of the mics are
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Speaker 26 3:25
working. I don't know if any of the mics are working. Yeah. It should work now. Nope.
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Speaker 27 3:29
Might be for you, Mr. Fink. What is the trigger to get a performance bond? Is there a certain
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Speaker 28 3:40
dollar amount before you have to? It's $50,000 according with Arkansas code.
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Speaker 27 3:45
yeah okay so for the district then I guess it's a repeat finding which is why we asked you to come down for this so just if you could touch on I guess you know you had this happen more than you know one consecutive year so is there some kind of process or policy or something that's been put in place for now you know that you know even though this happened two years in a row it won't happen going going ahead Representative Duke, do you have a question?
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Representative Hope Duke Unverified 4:41
Thank you. Yes, I'm curious. Were you all aware before the audit came in that you needed to do this? Did you need to
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Speaker 20 4:54
have the performance bond? Well, yes. Yes, we were. Not before the audit,
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Representative Hope Duke Unverified 4:58
but at the end of the audit. Okay, so that information as far as that needing to be done, you all didn't realize it until after you got dinged for it. And the reason why I'm asking is having served on the school board for several years, I realize a lot of times it feels like there's a lot of things you don't know you don't know. And so just in trying to maybe make sure we better help our school boards know so they can help our superintendents know what it is that they need to be making sure they're aware of doing. I realize you know now to address it, but how we can
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 5:34
help. Senator, you're recognized for a question. Thank you.
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Speaker 44 5:41
So just to get out of curiosity, along the same lines, the stream can be here. The mic's aren't working, so
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Speaker 11 5:50
the streaming's not working. Did you see something a minute ago with the mic? Incrementally,
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Speaker 47 5:58
yeah, but it just goes off. It's
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Speaker 48 6:07
disproportionately higher than the percentage of the project.
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Speaker 50 6:12
Right. I was just curious if you knew that. Okay. Okay. And I do know
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Speaker 51 6:17
that we have to request a performance bond. So I know that now. But
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Speaker 52 6:23
I can get that information for you. Members,
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 6:30
any further questions? Senator Clark, you're recognized. So,
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Senator Alan Clark Unverified 6:38
it's my understanding that it was not an oversight, but that you didn't know, correct? Okay. So, if this, I'm assuming that this is enacted law, I don't know if it's rule or law, but it works the same either way. This is something we definitely, if we think it's important enough for it to be law, that So AAEA and others, we want to be sure that superintendents know because, again, if it's not important, then we don't need to do it. It doesn't need to be law. And if it is, then we need to know that well-meaning people are trained to do it.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 7:21
Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Chair? Completely. Yeah, I think that's the same comment. If you don't know what you don't know, and we have an obligation to make sure people are aware that's part of the process. Members, any other questions? Seeing none, without objection, this item
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Speaker 7 7:48
is reviewed. Thank you. The next report to review is the Pickett School District report, which had one finding referred to the bond board. district administration reported and audit verified missing funds related to the junior high cheer activity account our review of receipts and canceled checks retained by parents and cash app transactions revealed that activity funds totaling three thousand dollars were not deposited into the district bank account however because the subsidiary receipt book utilized by the cheer sponsor could not be located we were unable to determine if additional amounts were not deposited the cheer sponsor was placed on administrative leave on august 9th 2022 and subsequently resigned the same day and that concludes the findings for piggott school district i don't think we have
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 8:38
anybody here from piggott i don't see anyone here members anyone have any questions or comments representative hodges yeah this question is probably
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Speaker 27 8:52
for Mr. Fink so I remember this back from when I was on the committee years ago and just out of curiosity so we had a few audits from back then that dealt with like booster clubs and things like that so just I remember talking about it back then there was kind of some confusion about these kinds of programs and what what's audited and what isn't so this looks like it was the the cheerleading team that was raising funds and some of those funds went missing um but it was i mean it's a sports program right so i guess i don't know if that those funds were part of the schools yes okay so it wasn't going to like a booster club or something like that. So if it is like a booster club or something like that, we don't typically, that's not part of the audit, right? So we don't know where those funds go, but because this was in the school's budget,
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Speaker 59 9:52
that's how it was called. Yeah, this was an actual activity fund account with the school district. And so that's why we were able to review those. Okay.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 10:02
Members, any other questions? Seeing no questions, without objection, this item is reviewed. Next
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Speaker 7 10:13
item. The next three reports were referred to the applicable prosecuting attorney. Crossett School District had four findings. The district conducted business with a financial institution in which a board member held a direct financial interest without ADE approval as required by Arkansas Code. Finding two, the district did not obtain a performance bond for a baseball field lighting project in the amount of $73,000 as required by Arkansas Code. Finding three, we noted the following deficiencies during an analysis of capital assets and expenditures. The current year capital asset beginning balance did not agree to the prior year ending balance. Two construction projects completed during the year for a band awning in a parking lot with a cost of $93,000 and $373,000 respectively, and three equipment assets costing almost $2,500 each, were not added to the capital asset listing. Additionally, a press box building completing during the year was added to the capital asset listing at an unexplained excess of almost $45,000. dollars. During our observation of 10 equipment assets, we noted one asset selected for inspection could not be located, and two assets could not be identified by a district assigned identification number or an alternative identification method. And finding four, the district made four monthly payments totaling $175,000 to a vendor's bank account using electronic transfer. After receiving a payment request via email that appeared to be from the vendor. After the fourth payment was processed, the recipient bank notified the district that the account appeared to be fictitious. The district immediately contacted the vendor who provided the correct bank account information. As of our report date, the district had not recovered the funds transferred to the fictitious account, and the vendor has not requested additional payments from the district. And that concludes the fine.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 12:22
Members, I would like to defer this audit for CrossFit County School District to our next meeting so that school officials can be invited to the meeting to answer questions from the committee related to the multiple findings. Without objection, this report for the CrossFit School District is deferred to the next meeting. Anyone have any comments or questions? I think when we get to this level, folks need to be here, and we want to hear from them. And sometimes we have to wait for a year to have multiple findings unless we defer it. And if we defer it, then we can invite them to the next meeting. So, again, anyone have a question or
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Speaker 39 13:08
a comment? Okay, there we go. Okay.
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Representative Hope Duke Unverified 13:11
Okay, so my question is, you know, being new, are they are we able to get specifics like when it says the 10 equipment assets that we're missing on finding three are we able to like know what those are
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Speaker 7 13:28
yeah so um the three equipment assets that were not added to the listing those were water heaters and then if you go down to that last bullet i think is what you were referring to we noted one asset that could not be located that was for a let's see wrote it down in here a small generator that was from 1998 that we could not find and so you know I don't know if it walked off I don't know if somebody took it or if they just had not taken proper care of their inventory
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 14:15
records. Can we get the members of that kind of detailed information prior to CrossFit being here? You're kind of your red line to hit stuff. Okay. Members, we'll try to get you more detail on that. I'd like to say, do we have somebody here from education, ADE? Could you come to the table, please? You know, Senator Clark brought up a good point about training for our districts to make sure they are aware of what the audit is. Could you introduce yourself, please? Greg Rogers with Department of Education. So, Mr. Rogers, we heard testimony a moment ago, and several people had questions as to how aware superintendents were of bond requirements, bonded issues. Is there training that goes on that you're aware of, or do you need
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Speaker 69 15:23
to get that information? Okay. So, yeah, there are
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Speaker 70 15:25
a couple of trainings. I know AAEA has one that deals with procurement. As far as the school board, I don't know what the school board association offers in the way they're training with them. That would be something that we'd have to ask them for. but I know that AAEA has different physical trainings throughout the year for superintendents and bookkeepers, as well as each year their superintendents and bookkeepers are required to go to what is referred to as Tier 1 training. And in Tier 1 training, that is where we go over the physical needs, we go over what main audit findings were found during the last year, we go over the different fiscal aspects that school districts need to be aware of. That's a required two-hour course every year. And so when we develop the Tier 1 training, we usually do and pick up things that are found in audit issues. So we can pick that up. If we see bonds showing up a lot, we'll add that to Tier 1 going forward and have that.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 16:22
Okay, so it would be your opinion then that there is adequate training available. Whether or not they avail themselves of it is a different question. but the opportunity to be trained in that is available. Would that be correct? We try to give
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Speaker 69 16:39
as much training as possible to give it, but I will say it's only as good as the people who are showing up and
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Speaker 70 16:44
it's only as good as the relevant information being presented, so we do try to change it each year to keep up with the issues that we're seeing. Okay.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 16:54
Question, Representative Duke? I got too many buttons up here. I got to cancel mine
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Representative Hope Duke Unverified 17:03
and hit yours and clear them all. I apologize. No, it's fine. Thank you. So, but you're not clear on what the school board's association does for training for the school
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Speaker 75 17:11
board on audit related issues. No, I'm not familiar with those. I
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Speaker 76 17:19
don't know if they have it. That's, I would have to ask them, but no, ma'am, I'm not familiar with what they have.
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Representative Hope Duke Unverified 17:25
Is that something that we could find out as far as what's being provided for school boards since they're kind of like the final check on these issues? Is there someone here from the School Board
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 17:37
Association? We can certainly ask them. Mr. Rogers, do you have a comment on that? Sorry. I'd be happy
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Speaker 70 17:49
to reach out to him and have that conversation and get a copy to send to match on what the training is that they offer that could be shared with y'all. I can do
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 17:59
that. And if you can get that to Mr. Fink, then he can distribute that to the members. I don't think we need to have a discussion on that necessarily if you can get that information to us. We'll
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Speaker 82 18:20
move on to the next item. okay the next report that
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Speaker 7 18:23
was referred to a prosecuting attorney is the isard county consolidated school district they had one finding the district failed to establish proper internal controls related to school credit card accounts the deficiencies noted were the result of district personnel not reconciling monthly monthly credit card statements to the related supporting documentation. As a result, the following was noted, $7,800 in undocumented expenses and $2,200 in expenses without proper documentation. In addition, expenses totaling $5,200 were not paid timely, which resulted in interest charges and fees. And that concludes the findings.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 19:03
Members, does anyone have any questions? Seeing no questions, this item
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Speaker 7 19:14
is reviewed. Next. The next report is the Little Rock School District. Finding one in our test of equipment purchases from the Education Stabilization Fund, we identified the purchase of 447 pieces of equipment with unit costs greater than $5,000 for which the district did not obtain prior written approval from DESE. retroactive approval was subsequently obtained from DESE during audit field work and finding two an employee was overpaid $15,721 by the district on September 3rd 2021 the individual who was hired as a custodian worked only seven of the 179 days she was contracted to work. Upon her resignation, the district failed to change her employment status in the payroll system and issued a final check equal to the amount remaining on her contract. The district notified the individual of the overpayment, but as of March 8th, 2023, they had not recovered the funds. And that concludes the findings for Little Rock School District. Folks, I understand
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 20:23
if you kept up with the COVID education stabilization fund, there are a lot of questions about that, how that money was spent, what the requirements were. So it's not unusual for districts to had some questions and made some errors there. And when audit went in, they very complied with everything. They worked well together. There don't seem to be any questions now. Members seem to have any questions over the Pulaski County district audit. Seeing no questions, without objection, this item is reviewed.
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Speaker 7 21:00
Next. The next report we're going to review is Pine Bluff School District, since it was on fiscal distress. It is on page 9 of your handout. There were four findings. The first, the district failed to transfer dedicated M&O millage revenues of $725,000 from the general fund to the capital projects fund. The financial statements were subsequently corrected by adjusting entries during audit field work. Finding two, in our sample of payroll expenditures, we identified undocumented compensation of $7,600 and improperly awarded incentive pay of $4,700 paid from ESSER funds without proper documentation. Finding three, during our examination of 12 payroll records, we noted the following discrepancies. A contract was not provided for the payroll preparer. Six employees were paid a total amount of $6,200 for additional and overtime hours without proper documentation. One employee retired in fiscal year 2021, but received a $963 payment in fiscal year 2022. And one employee did not meet the criteria for the $1,500 attendance incentive received. Finding four, the district did not update its capital asset records for additions, deletions, or depreciation occurring during the audit year. Upon inquiry of district personnel, it was determined the capital asset records were not reconciled with a physical inventory. And that concludes the findings for Pine Bluff School district. Members, you'll notice that Pine Bluff
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 22:51
is in fiscal distress. Do we have anyone from Pine Bluff here? And if you would, let me turn my mic on, off, and then I'll let you introduce yourselves, and you may do so now.
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Speaker 88 23:21
Good afternoon. Jennifer Barbary, Superintendent, Pine Bluff School District. Kelvin Gregg,
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Speaker 89 23:26
Assistant Superintendent, Pine Bluff School District. Greg Rogers, Department of Education.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 23:35
Thank you. And let's go through these one by one. So if you'll start out with finding one, do you have any comments on that? I think everybody's read your response. There's no need to read that again, but if you would kind of go into a little bit of detail about that, what you've done.
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Speaker 88 23:55
Yes, this was actually a self-reported situation where the district, we actually have 27 maintenance on operating mills, and the most common is
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Speaker 90 24:04
25, so the two dedicated at the time were not being removed and properly placed in the correct fund. this was brought to the bookkeeper's attention and we were able to reconcile that members anyone have
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 24:21
any questions if you would please address
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Speaker 90 24:25
please address finding 2 finding 2 it was an improper payment for extra duty pay that was utilized out of ESSER I accounts when COVID was going on. Since then, we have been making sure that we have timesheets and we don't necessarily do extra duty pay at this time anymore.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 24:56
So that was a finding that was corrected. Members, anyone have any questions? Seeing
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Speaker 88 25:09
no questions, please respond to item finding three. okay well finding three the best explanation we can
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Speaker 90 25:14
say for that one is the fact that the district has had extreme turnover in the finance office so through the last three years there have been three different bookkeepers and payroll personnel that have gone through so it's an accuracy and with our system. So we're working on solidifying a good system with financial
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 25:37
personnel. So curious, how does your pay for your supervisors in that position compare district-wide with other administrators? Bookkeeping pay
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Speaker 90 25:49
is close to administrative salary. So they're similarly similarly paid to a principal
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 25:55
or someone else at that level? Yes, sir. Currently it is. Currently it is. Okay. And support staff, how does their, how many support staff are in
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Speaker 90 26:10
that department? I would say five, so five and
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 26:15
the bookkeeper. And they're paid commensurate with maybe a teacher or someone? Yes. I'm just wondering why we have such high turnover in that area? Is it because of pay, work conditions,
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Speaker 90 26:29
support? I can't answer that. I just stepped into the position in January, so I would say that turnover is prevalent in that area. However, it's a system that needs to be fixed. Yeah, and I think that's true statewide. I don't
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 26:44
think it's necessarily true just for your district. I think statewide we see a lot of turnover in those positions, and I'm just curious as to why that occurs. I'm going to assume that to get the level of professional expertise that you need, we're going to have to pay them more. Would you, I won't hold you to an answer on that though. We're in fiscal distress.
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Speaker 103 27:05
I don't think we need to pay anybody more right now.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 27:08
Yeah. Members, anyone have any questions?
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Senator Jim Petty Unverified 27:12
Yes. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to kind of echo, I think, what you were talking about. I am a CPA or a recovering CPA myself and not in public practice. Let me be clear about that. But I do know that there's a lot of good bookkeepers out there, but I also know that of all the positions that I've seen through my years, fund accounting in this setting is one of the more complicated. And I would agree with you that when you have that financial distress, it just creates a situation that we're seeing here. And I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if there's some sort of statewide outsourced where you can have a bunch of qualified folks that do understand it to help with the outsourced bookkeeping or anything like that. I just know it's very complicated. We'll be looking for legislation from you to come up in 2025. I was afraid you might say that, but it is very complicated, and I am somewhat sympathetic to the situation. We're having trouble finding qualified staff in our accounting department at our company. So I don't know what the answer is, but we're open for suggestions. So what kind
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 28:36
of work do you do along with ADE? Are they working alongside you? Are they a resource for you? I know they don't have accountants. That's what audit does, but I don't think they can help you too much, but I don't
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Speaker 90 28:53
know. Currently, this fiscal year, we've been working very closely with the Office of Coordinated Support and Services. they've employed a former bookkeeper that is providing support on the i mean i would say it boots on the ground she's in the district at least twice a week um that's why many of these things have been corrected um we're working through that with her she is providing bookkeeper experience she's come she came from a district as a functioning system with a as a bookkeeper so um
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Speaker 95 29:23
yes we work very closely with department of ed in
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 29:27
this situation i'd be interested i assume you've had experience in other districts at an administrative level. Yes, sir. So what's the necessity that a bookkeeper live within the district? Live within the district? You mentioned they're on site. How important is that that they're on site?
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Speaker 90 29:47
Oh, well, now, our bookkeeper is on site. I was talking about the support from the state comes on site at least two days a week. So our bookkeeper
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 29:57
is on site every day. But why? Yeah. I mean, with technology now, I don't know that we, it seems like it was a statewide issue. We're trying to find somebody local, and I'm just asking in your opinion as an administrator with experience across several districts, how important is it that they have an office in the building? I don't know. I'm
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Speaker 90 30:14
a hands-on person, so I like having the person in the building because I walk down to the office daily to ask questions and be able to communicate back and forth about what's going on regarding the finances. And so, yes, it could be a phone call, but it's also easier just to walk to the office and sit down and have a conversation about it real quickly. And when we have people that come to the district, teachers, administrators, to ask questions about specific payments and how we need to be doing things, it's always nice to have the bookkeeper right there where we can say, hey, can you step in for a minute and help us with this? Yeah, fair enough. Any of the findings?
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 30:48
Here we are. Did we hit four? Yeah. Okay. Members, anybody else have a question? Seeing no
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Speaker 7 31:03
questions, without objection, this is reviewed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next item. There are 10 reports that contain findings that were not referred to a prosecutor. They were not repeat findings, and they were not related to any type of fiscal distress classification. Staff recommends that the committee take a moment, read over those findings, and then file those en masse as reviewed if there aren't any questions. Members, we'll give you a
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 31:28
few minutes to look through those. I'll give Lee County a shout out. They are in physical distress, but no findings. So way to go, Lee County. oh mr stone are you here yes would you like to address the fact that you had no findings it's always a wise decision not to testify if you don't have to but we appreciate you being here and uh it speaks a lot for the what the how serious you take this issue one that you had no findings and then two that you showed up for this committee and we appreciate that thank you very much and I won't ask the committee if they have any questions for you and without objection we'll see all of
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Speaker 7 32:35
those approved. Okay the remaining 107 reports listed on pages 12 through 14 consist of audits with no reportable findings and staff recommends that these reports be filed en masse. Members, any questions? Without objection, these are all reviewed.
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Speaker 116 32:54
We're going to go to
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Speaker 7 33:05
the Northeastern College. We have one more item, members. Arkansas Northeastern College had one finding, and it was related to material misstatements within the financial statements. I am not going to read the whole thing because it's fairly lengthy. That's on page four of your handout. And the misstatements covered the statement of net position, the statement of revenues, expenses, and changes in net position, and the statement of cash flows and the notes of the financial statements. These are all accounting errors. We're not saying any funds were missing or anything of that nature. Members, I'm concerned about
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 33:53
when we have these lengthy findings. I'm concerned that we don't have representatives here to speak to that. After talking with Audit, they had a high turnover. We're seeing that across the state in a lot of areas, and I don't know that we can address that. But I really would like to hear that, not only from audit, but from representatives from these universities and schools when they have this kind of a lengthy thing. I've already made one motion to hold off until July. I would be entertaining another motion to hold this one if anybody is interested. If not, we'll see it reviewed. Anyone interested in speaking to someone there? Yes, we have one. then we, without objection, then we will hold this over to next month and ask someone to be here to review that. Do we have someone from higher ed here? Nick Fuller with the Division of Higher Education. Yeah, thank you for being here. I know this is kind of a surprise for you to be here and speak to this, But we'll hold you over, too, until next month, and if you would be familiar with his finding. I'd really like to see somebody from higher ed here at every meeting. Yes, sir. Yeah, I'll be prepared every month going forward. It doesn't seem like that's been the history in the past, but we're going to change that. Yes, sir. I think when we see this kind of stuff, we need to have representation here. Can you speak to your higher ed's relationship as far as audits go with your department and higher ed?
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Nick Fuller Unverified 35:39
I will say, you know, with us being more of a coordinating board for the state institutions, we don't have as much of a hands-on with the day-to-day bookkeeping or anything at the campuses. So we don't find out what audit issues are until legislative audit has gone in and brought the report to you all. So then we can come in and help assist them with fixing things. But we don't know anything to be able to do ahead of time to audit the books themselves. That piece is still part of legislative audits. We're more of an oversight and coordinating rather than kind of directing the institutions on what they need to be doing.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 36:15
So is that because they don't want you or
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Nick Fuller Unverified 36:19
you don't want them? I think it's just the separation that was set in the law and the way that our department was created. So
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 36:27
for example, if a university or one of our high school districts higher ed campuses is audited.
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Speaker 124 36:35
When did you audit Northeastern? Let me. Just six months ago, a week ago? Yeah, recently.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 36:41
Recently. I'm just curious when they have an audit finding like this, are they reaching out to higher ed going, we're going to have to show up before committee. Can you give us any advice? That's not typical?
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Nick Fuller Unverified 36:55
Not often at this point. I wonder why. I couldn't give that information to. without speaking to all of them. I will say we are developing a fiscal training course for campus budget officers, the budget offices, similar to what DESE does for their fiscal staffs. So we will be able to take that under consideration on the points that we see occur often through campuses to present those for trainings. So I take your responses, meaning you see a need for that? Yes, sir. Yeah, we definitely need, you know, there's really a lack of fiscal staff statewide and the ability to hire new people with fiscal background. So developing something we can do statewide and training fiscal staff is very beneficial. Yeah, could you update us at our
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 37:37
July meeting where you are on that? I'd like to kind of track that and make sure that's occurring. Yes, sir. Okay. Members, anyone else have a question? Yes.
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Senator Jim Petty Unverified 37:48
Senator, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's really not a question per se for you. In looking at these findings, I think this is just further confirmation that having the qualified individual that has this knowledge, all of these deal with the preparation of the report, and I know legislative audit doesn't prepare the report. They audit the financial statements, but that is a very complicated, very specialized, when you're dealing with governmental accounting standards board type standards and what gets disclosed and what does not get disclosed. And I don't know the size of Northeastern College, but I think it would probably be like comparing Little Rock or Fort Smith to Piggott in terms of their ability to have the right staff and the qualified personnel. It doesn't mean that they shouldn't have them. I'm just saying the smaller it is, the harder it is to carry that cost of a six-figure salary, which is what a CPA probably would cost these days, who could master this.
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Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified 38:50
And that's, again, one of the reasons I want us to look into this and find out if there are solutions that we can deal with or what it looks like. So I appreciate higher ed taking the time to develop that policy, and maybe you can come up and let us know what the costs are and what's prohibiting that from happening. Members, any other questions? With no questions, without objection, this item will be reviewed. Thank you. Members, any other questions?
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Unknown speaker 39:20
Seeing none, we're adjourned. Thank you.
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Agenda

Call to order by Co-Chairman

Adoption of Minutes of the May 11, 2023 meeting

C. Review of Reports - Refer to the Synopsis

New Business.

Adjournment.

Speakers

Senator Dan Sullivan Chair Unverified
74 segments
Speaker 7
26 segments
Speaker 24
1 segment
Speaker 26
1 segment
Speaker 27
5 segments
Speaker 28
1 segment
Representative Hope Duke Unverified
6 segments
Speaker 20
1 segment
Speaker 44
1 segment
Speaker 11
1 segment
Speaker 47
1 segment
Speaker 48
1 segment
Speaker 50
1 segment
Speaker 51
1 segment
Speaker 52
1 segment
Senator Alan Clark Unverified
2 segments
Speaker 59
1 segment
Speaker 39
1 segment
Speaker 69
2 segments
Speaker 70
5 segments
Speaker 75
1 segment
Speaker 76
1 segment
Speaker 82
1 segment
Speaker 88
3 segments
Speaker 89
1 segment
Speaker 90
13 segments
Speaker 103
1 segment
Senator Jim Petty Unverified
5 segments
Speaker 95
1 segment
Speaker 116
1 segment
Nick Fuller Unverified
4 segments
Speaker 124
1 segment