By TOM McLAUGHLIN
The city of DeFuniak Springs has paid extravagantly for the financial missteps of its recent past, and this year has decided to shell out thousands of dollars to prevent a similar future.
City Attorney Clayton Adkinson filed a report June 6 notifying the DeFuniak Springs governing board that the city had lost nearly $221,000 in the last two years by failing to file audits and annual financial reports with the state in a timely fashion.
The tardy filing error was exacerbated, Adkinson said, by city officials neglecting to respond to efforts by the state’s Joint Legislative Auditing Committee to contact them. Those efforts came in the form of both emails and certified letters, the attorney noted.
But Jowers added, there’s no way this year’s audit will be prepared in a timely fashion.
“It is my belief ... that if the city had responded in some manner, either in writing or by telephone, that the committee would have perhaps been inclined to grant us an extension in regards to the audits,” Adkinson said.
Letters began coming to the city in November of 2015, documents presented by Adkinson show. The first ones chastise the city for neglecting to file either an audit or an annual financial report for fiscal year 2013-14.
When the city failed to respond, it lost $65,068.43 in half-cent sales tax dollars and $24,619.70 of municipal revenue sharing dollars, according to Adkinson’s accounting. The money was withheld by the state Department of Revenue as of December 2015 per state statute.
Records indicate the city again failed to timely file an audit report and financial report for fiscal year 2014-15.
Correspondence between Adkinson and Roger Hinson with the Florida Department of Revenue, dated June 1 of this year, indicates in January of 2016, the city lost out on distribution of $49,933.26 in half-cent sales tax dollars.
“For the current fiscal year, the Department has withheld $48,325.22 which was otherwise distributable in March 2017 and $57,610.25 which was otherwise distributable in April 2017,” Hinson’s email said.
The city has now caught up on its past due reporting. A letter sent to Jeff Atwater, the state’s Chief Financial Officer from the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee on May 19 requests that DeFuniak Springs be removed from a list of municipalities subject to losing state funding.
DeFuniak Springs City Councilwoman Jamie Griffith said the city will receive some portion of the money withheld this year, which is apparently what brings Adkinson’s final calculations for total loss to $220,975. The city attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Adkinson was scheduled to discuss the financial situation with the full council June 12, but, Griffith said, had to postpone the meeting.
At that meeting though, the city agreed to pay the accounting firm of Carr, Riggs and Ingram $20,000 to get its books in shape so that the firm that does its annual audit, Saltmarsh, Cleaveland and Gund, can proceed.
The cities books are incomplete and it will take at least a couple of months to straighten them out, council members learned from CRI representative Alan Jowers at the June 12 meeting.
If the accounting firm encounters more difficulty than expected in fixing the city finances the Carr, Riggs and Ingram price tag could jump up, Jowers said. He estimated the cost would not exceed $100,000.
