New Marion auditor aims to get books in order after state report

Even though the audit of the City of Marion’s finances for 2020 is now completed, Auditor Miranda Meginness says there’s still much work left to do since the audit for 2021 has just begun.

“It is an overwhelming process, especially coming in and not really having any audit experience. I have financial experience, but not government finances or auditing,” said Meginness, who was appointed to the office by the Marion County Republican Party Central Committee in November 2021. “It’s a steep learning curve, for sure. That being said, we’ve gotten one out of the way and now we head into the second. I’ll be a little bit more prepared this time because I’ve got one under my belt.”

Meginness replaced former Auditor Robert Landon III, who resigned resigned on Oct. 18, 2021, two years following his election to the office in 2019.

The 2020 state audit report includes corrective actions the Marion Auditor’s Office must implement based on six findings identified during the audit process. It detailed findings for recovery issued against Landon in the amount of $154,399 and another former auditor Kelly Carr in the amount of $22,500 for errors that occurred during their respective terms in office.

Meginness said the most pressing issue identified in the 2020 state audit report involves the city’s bank-to-book reconciliations, which should have been conducted monthly, but were not dating back to January 2020. She has already started the process of updating the bank-to-book reconciliations by reviewing records dating back to 2019.

“From what I’ve seen, they’ve either been partially done or not done at all from 2020 through now,” she said. “A lot of what this stuff is (gesturing to about a dozen boxes of documents in her office) is me going through 2019 bank records so I have a format of what I’m looking for and how to move forward.”

In addition to the monthly bank-tobook reconciliation, Meginness said her office will begin conducting a “monthly comparison of the appropriations done to the estimated resources available and limit appropriations as necessary,” and implement “a monthly budget review of every department, and make necessary appropriations at the end of the fiscal year to cover additional expenditures.”

Meginness said the purpose of the corrective action plan issued by the state auditor is to “make sure we’re paying attention” and amounts to common-sense practices that she would have instituted anyway under normal circumstances.

“You can’t write checks you can’t cash,” she said bluntly. “And it comes down to if we don’t have good administration practices and good record keeping, we’re going to end up running ourselves into the hole. A lot of these corrective action plans will help make sure that our records are kept up to date, our bank-to-book reconciliations are done, that any appropriations are within our budget, or that we request more funds if we need to.

“This isn’t anything difficult to do, it’s honestly stuff that should’ve been done all along.”

Meginness said the 2021 audit will be conducted by a private firm rather than by the Ohio Auditor of State’s Local Government Services due to staffing issues.

The 2021 audit must be completed and filed by the end of September 2022.

“We’re definitely on a time crunch and our CPA firm is aware of that, so all we have to do is stay on top of everything and make sure we get it done and we get it done accurately,” Meginness said.