06/25/2019
State Auditor Nicole Galloway today released an audit of Hickory County, located in southwest Missouri. The audit found some areas needing improvement, including controls and procedures in the sheriff's office and computer security. The audit gave Hickory County a rating of "good."
"I encourage Hickory County officials to use the findings and recommendations of this audit as a way to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent in the most effective and efficient way," Auditor Galloway said.
The audit found the need for improvement of several controls and procedures in the sheriff's office, which collected $46,000 in various fees and other receipts in 2018. Weak control areas include receipting and depositing procedures; disbursement of receipts to the county treasurer; seized property tracking; and identification and comparison of liabilities to available cash balances.
The audit reported the sheriff had not billed surrounding counties for boarding prisoners, nor entered in written agreements with those counties for the services provided.
In addition, the audit also found the county collector did not withhold the appropriate amounts from the county's general property tax collections for the assessment fund. The audit recommended better security controls over county computers.
A copy of the complete audit can be found here.
