Treasurer candidates differ on job description
The two candidates vying for Garland County treasurer are polarized by dueling notions on the office’s proper scope.
Republican and two-term incumbent Tim Stockdale maintains it should function as prescribed by the state Constitution, serving as a clearinghouse for the approximately $500 million it processes each year. Mark A. Toth, his Democratic opponent, said treasurers’ custodianship of county finances obliges them to scrutinize other departments’ expenditures.
The treasurer draws an annual salary of $63,865, oversees two employees and a budget of more than $200,000. A 2-percent commission charged on all transac- tions except those involving grants and school district money fully reimburses the county general fund for its operating expenses.
“It can be narrowly defined simply as writing the checks and keeping the account records,” said Toth, a former staff accountant for a CPA firm who currently runs a personal and business accounting service, and, according to his campaign literature, was prompted by quorum court members to run. “I believe the treasurer has an added responsibility, because he sees every check written, every dollar that goes out the door, he can speak up when he thinks there’s wasteful spending or imprudent financial deci-
sions are being pushed.”
Stockdale said the extra-constitutional function Toth envisions is improper, explaining that the primary duties are receiving funds, disbursing funds, putting money into appropriate line items and finding the best interest rates among the list of banks preapproved by the state to receive public deposits. He said they are secured by the 105-percent collateralization required by the county.
“If I see something wrong, I say something about it,” said Stockdale, a retired Air Force sergeant and former Fountain Lake mayor. “I have in the past, but each elected official is responsible for their own office. We’re completely separate entities.
“It’s not the treasurer’s job to be a watchdog for other departments. That’s their money. Our job by law is to release funds, period, no questions asked. If the county judge signs a claim, I have to release the money so long as there’s money in the account.”
Toth said he’ll empower the office with the activism he’s wielded as a citizen speaking out against what he said was a frivolous expenditure to buy new chairs for the county’s elected officials and a proposal to charge the Garland County Library an administrative fee.
Toth submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Stockdale’s office earlier this week in connection to the state Division of Legislative Audit’s examination of the county’s 2011 finances. The audit cited a misclassification that misallocated $642,346 from a Federal Emergency Management reimbursement following a tornado to the road department fund.
Stockdale said it was a coding error, as the county’s software provider has yet to synchronize its program with what the state uses to code fund accounts. He said the county is updating the system to match the standardized one the state requires all counties to use.
“(The state is) reclassifying all the fund codes, so everybody’s using the same one,” he said. “The vendor’s still working on getting us the same codes as everyone else.”
Software incompatibility was also attributed to the audit’s supplementary finding that $747,713 was unreconciled between disbursement totals and account balances. A letter auditors sent to Stockdale last year indicates that the discrepancy was “due to processing errors with the computer software.”
Stockdale said Garland County was the first county to use the software when the audit was being conducted. A letter from the Division of Legislative Audit’s information systems auditor to vendor Financial Intelligence before the audit acknowledges the incompatibility issue, explaining that it’s a “proprietary issue” with the software.
“Legislative audit likes to take our financial information and upload it into their computer software,” Stockdale said. “When they uploaded it, it didn’t put it in the template they wanted. The money that came in matches what went out. Our records were good, but it didn’t match their software.”
Toth said the audit report piqued his curiosity, leading him to submit the FOIA request.
“I wanted to know why the warrants and checks issued by the treasurer’s office did not match up with withdrawals from the bank account,” Toth said.
Stockdale also says a complaint Hot Springs resident John Mark Lewis levied against him with the state Ethics Commission is politically motivated. It alleges a Feb. 25 post on the treasurer’s office’s Facebook page violated the election code provision forbidding the direction of personal property provided with public funds to campaign purposes.
Stockdale posted “he was happy to file for re-election.” The Ethics Commission is investigating the matter, according to its letter confirming the receipt of Lewis’ complaint that Lewis provided to the The Sentinel-Record.
“The guy who filed the complaint is my opponent’s best friend,” Stockdale said. “They’re buddies. It’s strictly political. It’s just a shame. All I said was that I had filed for re-election.”
Toth declined to comment on his relationship with Lewis, saying Stockdale’s assertion amounted to a deflection.
“Rather than address the allegations, he’s attacking the person,” he said. “He needs to address the allegations.”
Stockdale said he’ll use a third term to continue actions he’s implemented over the last four years to correct deficiencies. Those include directly depositing checks in school districts’ banking accounts, saving 30,000 sheets of paper a year by storing claims and warrants electronically, using a remote scanner to deposit checks and eliminating the expense of a postage machine.
“We’re constantly looking for ways to operate more efficiently,” said Stockdale, saying his experience as a process engineer for Falcon Jet allows him to root out inefficiencies. “Some people may say, ‘It’s government money, so it doesn’t matter.’ But we don’t think that way.
“We’ll keep safeguarding taxpayers money and look for better processes and more ways to get higher interest rates for county money.”
Toth said the improvements are laudable, but sees a broader role that’s going unfilled.
“Mr. Stockdale has focused his attention almost exclusively on promoting deficiencies in the office,” he said. “That’s to his credit. But looking at the larger county government and it’s expenditures, diligence could be applied to other areas of spending in the county. And the taxpayers would benefit.”