Walton blames accounting firm for error, demands $1 million reimbursement
By The Associated Press
Posted Nov 10, 2015 at 1:28 PM
Updated at 1:34 PM
Walton County is blaming the accounting firm of Carr Riggs and Ingram for auditing oversights that have cost it over $1 million in the last decade.
A letter sent Thursday to CRI founding member Stephen Riggs demands repayment, with interest, of $1,075,635.75 in lost recreational plat fees and taxpayer dollars erroneously sent to the city of DeFuniak Springs as “Road and Bridge monies.”
“Please know that the county will pursue available civil remedies should you refuse to pay that amount as demanded,” said the letter, signed by Walton County Attorney Mark Davis.
Riggs acknowledged receiving the letter from Walton County, but said it had been forwarded to Hilton Galloway, the director of CRI’s governmental accounting and auditing division in Enterprise, Alabama.
Galloway failed to return several phone calls seeking comment.
Davis notes in the letter that audits conducted by CRI failed to turn up evidence that in 2005, “on two separate occasions, the (county) Planning Department failed to assess and collect recreational plat fees.”
The discovery of one of those failed collections, an accounting error that resulted in the county being paid $614.25 of $614,250, helped spark a grand jury investigation of the Planning Department.
The investigation, which led to the indictment of former Walton County Planning Director Pat Blackshear on charges of perjury, turned up a second accounting error for which $20,560.25 was charged on a $205,560.25 invoice.
Blackshear has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“Your firms audit of that department failed to discover those discrepancies,” Davis said in his letter to Carr Riggs and Ingram. “Such a failure caused Walton County to lose $796,635.74.”
The county also wants reimbursement for the last five years worth of funds the county has been sending to the city of DeFuniak Springs for more than 100 years.
Bob Hudson, the executive director of the Walton County Taxpayer’s Association, was the first to question the “road and bridge” allocation to the city.
He said his research indicated the city first asked the county for a road and bridge allocation in 1914, after some livestock, cows and/or mules, were electrocuted on a roadway.
The county’s been cutting a check every year since, Hudson said.
The annual allocation was revealed this year when the county Tax Collector’s Office changed to a software system that separated the road and bridge payment from others, Hudson said.
When he asked Davis and County Administrator Larry Jones about the assessment, neither knew anything about it he said.
Davis called upon CRI to reimburse the county for road and bridge payments made “over the previous five tax years.”
“Your firm’s audit failed to disclose this payment,” his letter said. “Walton County, Florida was damaged because of your failure.”