Two comments were noted on a state audit of the Christian County Sheriff’s Department’s 2019 fee account, but Sheriff Tyler DeArmond says those issues from his first year in office have since been addressed.
Auditor Mike Harmon’s report says “the Christian County Sheriff’s Office failed to implement adequate internal controls to ensure complete and accurate accounting records were maintained.”
Specifically, the report indicates the fourth quarter financial report was incomplete and inaccurate; the receipts ledger was incomplete and inaccurate; the former bookkeeper did not maintain a disbursement ledger for the fee account, causing disbursements of about $4.1 million on the fourth quarter report to not be properly supported.
Harmon adds that a $1,225,000 contribution received from the Christian County Fiscal Court in June 2019 was not deposited into the local fee account, but rather directly submitted to County Fees to be posted to the department’s 75-percent operating account.
The second comment states the Christian County Sheriff’s Office failed to properly account for tax commissions, saying the office reported about $907,000 in tax commissions for calendar year 2019. However, the sheriff failed to remit about $147,000 of tax commissions earned in October 2019 from the tax account.
Harmon says, “The sheriff’s total commissions earned in October 2019 was $352,255; however, only $205,104 was deposited into the fee account.”
The finance officer reportedly stated that it appeared the commissions earned during the last week of October were not properly distributed to the fee account. Due to the tax commissions being understated for calendar year 2019, $147,151 in funds were not available for the operation of the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff DeArmond responded to comments, saying in part: “With 2019 being the first year of my term, it proved to be both challenging and educational. The previous administration bookkeeper retired with the former Sheriff, leaving my administration with a lot of questions. Although we had cooperation and contacts outside state and county offices, we were often faced with not knowing what questions to ask. Half way through 2019 I discovered my bookkeeper was overwhelmed and under qualified to handle such a position. Fortunately, I was able to hire our current bookkeeper who has proven to be both capable and qualified to guide our office back to the correct path and keep us going in the right direction.”
