County will resurrect independent auditor job

Spokane County commissioners moved this week to restore an efficiency-seeking independent auditor position that went dark in 1999.

“I am just very pleased that this board (of commissioners) recognizes the need for this position and really supports it,” county Auditor Vicky Dalton said Thursday after commissioners put the position in their tentative 2008 budget. “I am just really heartened by this.”

Commissioner Todd Mielke was absent, but Commissioner Bonnie Mager said she was “very supportive.” Commissioner Mark Richard has championed the idea for months.

Dalton was the county’s internal auditor for 10 years until she took office in January 1999 and the job was eliminated.

Unlike traditional bean counters who make sure money goes where it’s supposed to, the internal auditor’s job is to ask questions, Dalton said, like: “What are we trying to accomplish? Are we accomplishing those goals? Can we do it better?”

The reincarnated position will come with more freedom to ask unpopular questions without political interference.

Plans call for the new internal auditor to answer only to a committee that includes outsiders with expertise in good business practices as well as top county officials. Dalton answered to a committee of county insiders.

“We’re going to want some pretty high-level managers from the community” to serve on the committee, Dalton said.

She said county officials haven’t decided the structure of the committee or how to ensure it isn’t dominated by county officials with vested interests.

“That’s what we’re still working on,” Dalton said. “The devil is in the details.”

When the position is filled early next year, county commissioners probably will be looking for a certified public accountant with internal auditing experience – “and hopefully with government internal auditor experience,” Dalton said.

The job will pay $50,630 to $68,318 a year.

Results may not come immediately, Dalton cautioned. She said some of her suggestions have taken 10 to 15 years to implement.

One of her successes was to improve procedures for handling admission ticket receipts at the Spokane County Interstate Fair.

“It used to be that the money came in in paper bags and got thrown on the table and, if they got around to counting it, fine,” Dalton said.

Nor was the money reconciled with the number of tickets sold.

An attempt to solve the problem with cash registers “didn’t work at all,” Dalton said. So she went back to the drawing board and came up with a system in which numbered tickets are carefully monitored.

“The golf courses were probably my greatest frustration in the position,” Dalton said.

Her recommendations in the mid-1990s for better segregation of greens fees and other county revenue from private pro shop receipts were implemented only a few years ago. Dalton said county officials’ relationship with long-established and trusted golf pros contributed to the delay, as did difficulty in finding adequate computer software.

In Dalton’s view, the issue wasn’t suspicion of wrongdoing but ruling out the possibility.