City Administrator David Myers said Tuesday that McComb should be closer to catching up with its annual audits by the end of the calendar year.
Audits through 2018 have been completed up to this point, and Myers said audits for 2019 and 2020 should be completed by the end of the year.
Myers said Bruno & Tervalon LLP of New Orleans is working on financial statements for 2019 and will follow up with the audit. He said Carolyn DuPre, a CPA from Jackson, is working on the 2020 financials. He said her contract to work on the financial statements ends July 27 and he will ask the board to vote to extend it for 90 days next week. Myers said he expects Bruno & Tervalon LLP, CPAs to work on the 2019 audit after the financial statements are completed.
“She (DuPre) has been in contact with Bruno & Tervalon because those two audits will have to eventually kind of mirror each other because what happened in ‘19 will roll over to ‘20,” Myers said. “So, they’re in consultation to make sure information will be able to merge one to the other.”
Selectman Tommy McKenzie suggested setting deadlines for the work. He also asked what personal responsibility each board member would have for the city being behind in its audits.
“Could he speak to what board members’ individual personal responsibility could be for failed audits and approving budgets that are not correct and overspending budget items?” he said.
Board Attorney Marcus Williams said state law says, “Annual audits or reports required; noncompliance; authority to withhold from allocations and payments payable to municipality certain amount to pay cost of audit or report.”
Williams said he did not believe board members had personal liability, but said he would reach out to the State Auditor’s Office for more information.
“I will definitely do more research and give you a firm answer on that,” he said.
Until the audits are completed, McKenzie said the board would not have the necessary information to make informed decisions on spending money.
“We don’t know where we’re financially at in the city,” he said. “It will make the board make uninformed bad decisions until we get this resolved. So what team is in place at city hall to get this information straight?”
Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said the city clerk is responsible for the finances.
“The State Auditor will deal with the city clerk,” he said. “That’s why the city clerk is the chief financial officer for the city.”
Despite being behind on audits, Myers said the city is in good financial shape.
“The City of McComb right now, right today, is paying all of its bills on time,” he said. “Now, the City of McComb operates off of the tax base, whether it’s ad valorem tax or sales tax or special revenue that we get.”
Myers said the biggest concern about outstanding audits is the city does not know how much money in the bank rolls over from one fiscal year to the next.
“To Selectman McKenzie’s point, yes, we need to get those audits done,” he said.
“But I assure you the City of McComb has not defaulted on one of our loans or any other obligation that we have out there, so we currently have money in the bank and we’re paying our bills,” Myers saiud. “We need to get the audits done. I definitely agree with that.”
“It’s a state statute to do audits every year and turn them into the auditor,” McKenzie said. “It’s important. It’s beyond important. You just don’t know where you’re at until you get that done. I mean, you say we’ve got money in the bank, but until you get these financial papers done, audited financials done, then you really don’t know what’s what.
“I’m of the opinion that we’re going to make some bad decisions until this gets up to date.”
