Blytheville Mayor James Sanders spent most of Thursday morning in an exit interview with auditors conducting the city's 2010 State Legislative audit, and he anticipates a report within a few weeks.
However, auditors did not give the mayor a timeframe for the much-anticipated report. After gathering the information, they must submit it to the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, which reviews the findings for approval.
"It should not be very long," Sanders said. "I would say in weeks. I wouldn't classify months right now. But again, they have to submit this to the legislative audit committee and the legislative audit committee has to meet and do the review. But it should not be much longer."
The mayor said he did a lot of the talking during the interview, asking auditors questions to learn how to avoid mistakes found in past audits.
The 2008/2009 audit showed the large IRS debt, now $3.2 million in delinquent payroll taxes, and noncompliance of state law and accepted accounting practices in the offices of the mayor and finance director, held by Barrett Harrison and Faye Griggs, respectively, at the time.
"I probably took them off-guard because I started asking them questions," Sanders said. "What is this term: separation of duties? Can this person do this? Do you think I need to have another person in that office? Do we need a part-time worker to look at those things? What's the involvement of the treasurer? Does the treasurer have to look at these things? How can this other situation not happen again? Where are the bells, where are the whistles? Those are the things I'm concerned about. So in this exit, I think I did a lot more talking than they did because I'm concerned about fixing it, putting something in place to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Did the mayor get the impression auditors would have similar findings as the 2008/2009 report?
"I asked them that, they're not telling me anything," Sanders said. "They're not coming in with any types of statements. They would just ask me questions and I would answer them about procedures."
The information is protected by law, though most of the conversation centered around procedures, the mayor said.
"They're not stating anything was wrong, they're merely asking questions to define," he said.
Sanders said to fix any problems, one must identify why they happened.
He is looking at more standardized, streamlined methods, believing the city's new software should help with some of the issues.
"I don't believe in just going in here and looking at an old budget and then producing a budget," Sanders said. "I want to know what it is."
The city will be working on the 2012 budget in the coming weeks, what will be Sanders' first full budget process as mayor.
mbrasfield@blythevillecourier.com