The St. Mary Parish Council's auditor found repeat issues with bookkeeping in the audit of 2024 - which was filed late.
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor released the audit, which you can read for yourself by scrolling down, on Monday.
Here's the LLA's summary:
The independent auditor’s report, which was for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024, had seven findings – all of which were repeated from the previous year. The auditor found the Parish Council failed to monitor the collection of garbage pickup fees, failed to amend the budgets of the Boat Landing Permit Fund and the Road Construction & Maintenance Fund when actual revenues were less than budgeted revenues by more than 5% or the budget of the OJP Enhancement Grant when actual expenditures exceeded budgeted expenditures by more than 5%, and had deficits in the Road Construction & Maintenance Fund, Capital Improvement Fund, and Jail Operating & Maintenance Fund. In addition, the council failed to file its audit report with the Legislative Auditor’s office within the required time frame, and management and staff lacked the necessary expertise and training to properly prepare financial statements for several of the parish’s component units. The council also lacked adequate segregation of duties for the accounting functions of several component units, and the financial statements for Hospital Service District No. 1 required several audit adjustments.
Auditors found that neither management nor staff had the training or expertise needed to apply governmental accounting practices in preparing financial statements for several different districts in the parish. They noted that this problem means "it is possible that the financial statements and related supporting transactions may have a significant departure from generally accepted accounting principles."
Auditors classified this as a "material weakness" for all of the districts, except for Recreation District No. 5, for which they said it was a "significant deficiency."
The districts include: Water & Sewer Commission No. 3; Water & Sewer Commission No. 4; Wards 5 & 8 Joint Sewer Commission; Wax Lake East Drainage District; Fire Protection District No. 3; Fire Protection District No. 11; Recreation District No. 1; Recreation District No. 3; Recreation District No. 5; St. Mary Parish Tourist Commission; St. Mary Parish Communications District; Water & Sewer Commission No. 5; and Hospital District No. 1.
In response, the parish administration said they've looked at the issue and decided that the cost of employing "in house personnel with this expertise exceeds the benefit."
Auditors also found that the government's system covering garbage pick-up didn't notice when more than $545,000 in late revenue.
The government charges a fee for trash pick up in the parish, but doesn't have a system to bill it. So, there's an agreement with other entities - like city governments and water districts - to add the fee to their bills. Those entities take a fee for their trouble, and pass the rest on to St. Mary Parish Government.
But auditors found two governments owed about $545,000 in garbage fees that they had collected but never passed along.
"Failure to properly monitor revenue collections on a periodic basis can result in lost revenues," the auditors wrote. "The Council's internal control system in place failed to recognize when payments were not received from these entities."
In response, management said they would "fine tune our control system in place to ensure all garbage fees from the governmental entities are received. and management will be informed when entities fail to remit timely payments. The Council will put collections procedures in this area in writing. Subsequent to year end, some of the fees have been received."
Here's the full audit:
