Audit finds several areas in need of improvement, including case management, case record maintenance, and reconciliation of liabilities and bank statements
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — State Auditor Nicole Galloway today released an audit of the City of Bel-Ridge Municipal Division in the Twenty-First Judicial Circuit. Bel-Ridge is located in north St. Louis County. The audit gave the court a rating of “fair” and made several recommendations to improve accounting procedures and records.
The audit found several areas of concern with the court’s accounting controls and procedures, including a lack of adequate supervisory or independent reviews of the work done by the Court Clerk. The division’s bank account was not reconciled on a monthly basis, and the municipal division was unable to explain to the Auditor’s Office why the reconciled bank account balance exceeded the court’s liabilities by more than $13,000.
The municipal division also has not established procedures to periodically review the status of cases involving unresolved financial transactions, such as bonds. The failure to routinely review these items and apply, forfeit or refund money when appropriate increases the number of cases requiring monitoring, and money from those cases can’t be used. Additionally, the court did not maintain complete case records. The court clerk could not locate 20 case files requested by auditors dated between March 2013 and September 2016.
A separate citizen-requested audit of the city of Bel-Ridge is ongoing.
The complete audit can be found here.
