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February 14, 2012 in City
Spokane County lost thousands by not collecting bonds
Audit finds no tracking of unpaid surety bonds
Spokane County is failing to collect surety bonds from criminal defendants who forfeit them when they don’t show up for their court dates, a state audit has found.
The county has 30 days to notify a bail bond company when a defendant doesn’t appear. If the county doesn’t notify the bond company, then the county can’t collect the money.
State auditors discovered that more than $30,000 was lost in just four cases that were examined.
The extent of the problem and the losses could be much higher.
According to a management letter accompanying the audit, the auditor’s staff said, “The county is responsible for developing adequate internal controls to track surety bonds received as a condition of a defendant’s release” during the pre-trial phase.
“Because it has not done so, we were not able to determine how much revenue may have been lost during the audit period,” the letter said.
Superior Court Judge Ellen Kalama Clark told county commissioners that the court is trying to fix the problem and recover the money. Currently, one of the county’s judges is tracking cases for forfeited bonds.
“There is no easy way electronically to do this,” Clark said during a meeting on Monday with the state auditor’s staff and commissioners.
The audit was for 2010.
The county also was criticized by auditors for failing to pass along banking fees charged to the county’s general fund. The fees are nearly $170,000 a year, and some of them are being charged for transactions such as the use of coins by the Spokane Transit Authority.
Commissioners said they would like to establish agreements to charge other agencies with bank fees levied in conjunction with those agencies’ transactions.
In addition, the auditor said the county should not carry $48 million in the fund for clearing county warrants – essentially, its checking account – since that money does not earn interest.
The county and other agencies in Spokane had an $828 million balance in the state investment pool as of Dec. 31, 2010.
In a third issue, the city of Spokane is charging too much money to the county for indirect services provided by the city-county emergency communications director.
The state auditors asked that an agreement justifying the charges be included in county documents.
The audit did not include any more serious findings, said Debbie Pennick, audit manager for the state.
An earlier finding that the county assessor was not getting new property on the tax rolls quickly enough is being addressed to eliminate the problem, which was discovered in 2007, according to the audit summary.
Returning farmland to a state of nature 
DickAdams on February 14 at 8:02 a.m.
When I read, “The audit did not include any more serious findings, said Debbie Pennick, audit manager for the state”, I`m reminded about the shuffle in audit managers the past year or so. I submitted a written complaint to the local Audit Manager in Spokane. I`m on the record, where he was up beat in helping me and was surprised at some of the stuff I submitted and said he would personally check out one item I had listed and find out about it immediately it looked so bad. Some of my other stuff surprised him as well and he appointed a local auditor to handle my complaint and introduced her to me. In my conversation with her, she also agreed with me the same as the local Manager of Audit and said something didn`t look right. She assured me she would investigate every item of my complaint. I was told by the local Manager, he would have to run my complaint through the State Auditor but he felt there would be no problem. Guess what? Both the local Manager of Audit and the auditor he assigned to help me are no longer employed with the state. I tried to find out what happened and hit a brick wall. I did however, hear from Debbie Pennick, who subsequently sent me a Dear John letter re my registered complaint that was dropped. Figures.
dataxman on February 14 at 8:29 a.m.
First, find a bank that will not charge the County a fee for handling change. The bank will make more on the monies deposited by the County than they will lose in handling coin.
Next fire the person who was responsible for not collecting on the bonds
terrymr on February 14 at 8:49 a.m.
Hey that’s cool, I want a law that says I don’t have to pay bills if nobody asks me for it for 30 days.
The_Seer on February 14 at 10:17 a.m.
The main problem stems from one fact and it’s also prevalent in District 81, the SPD, the City and SCSO: The people running them and staffing them just aren’t all that bright. They discourage hiring outsiders. They have committee type hiring that allows way too much input from varying personalities and even one person who feels threatened by an applicant can derail their hiring. It’s the same old stuff going through and through and the results are the same as well. Substandard, shoddy performance of which only the tip of the iceberg is revealed. Go to a P.E. class at a local high school someday and tell me those teachers are earning their keep.
RedCedar on February 14 at 11:01 a.m.
Wow. This is quite a list of inexcusably poor accounting practices and financial management choices. Does the county have a controller and a treasurer like a private company of that size would have? Are they competent? I realize it’s easy to be careless with other people’s money, but where is this kind of reporting when the county is claiming it needs to raise taxes?
There’s also clearly the possibility of criminal misconduct in a situation like this. The bonding company or the bank, for example, could be paying someone in the county government to not collect bonds due or to leave $48 million in a no-interest checking account. It could be mere incompetence, but I hope the state auditors will look a little closer before concluding that it’s nothing but incompetence.