Auditor finds 2 deficiencies, Martin administration made fixes
HAMILTON » Talk about corrective action.
The township under Mayor Jeff Martin’s leadership has corrected two significant deficiencies in financial or budgetary practices.
Mercadien, a local auditing firm, reviewed the township’s financial books last year and identified a pair of shortcomings.
“Two findings, but both appear to be corrected,” Matt Daly, a Mercadien official, said at Tuesday’s Hamilton Council meeting. “We believe that both were corrected after the report completion.”
Both of the findings were “recurring from the prior year,” Daly said, meaning the deficiencies had originated under former Mayor Kelly Yaede’s tenure.
Martin took office on Jan. 1, 2020.
Mercadien’s first finding exposed deficiencies in capital improvement ordinances with cash deficits for more than five years. An auditor previously found that shortcoming in the 2018 annual audit.
Mercadien’s second finding exposed a snafu involving grant receivable balances. An auditor previously found this shortcoming in the 2018 annual audit.
In the new 2019 annual audit, Daly said, Mercadien wanted to “verify” that Hamilton Township implemented the corrective action from the prior year.
“I just want to commend the mayor and his team,” Councilman Rick Tighe said at Tuesday’s virtual council meeting. “The mayor in his first year in office under difficult circumstances and with multiple CFOs was still able to pre-emptively take corrective action, so a lot of the items that we are talking about were actually already done before the auditors even made the suggestions, so kudos to the mayor.”
Hamilton Council on Tuesday voted 5-0 to approve the corrective action plan for the 2019 audit.
Council on Tuesday also approved an $80,000 contract reappointing Mercadien as the township’s auditor this year. Mercadien last year conducted Hamilton’s financial audit under a $70,000 contract, records show.
Warren A. Broudy, managing director of the Mercadien Group, said the auditing firm has expressed an “unmodified opinion” of Hamilton’s federal grant compliance and financial statements, which is the “highest level of assurance.”