Wednesday, the Pearl River County Board of Supervisors once again discussed acquiring an independent audit on two separate sets of books handled by former Pearl River County Chancery Clerk David Earl Johnson. One set of records is in Quickbooks format, while the other is in AS/400.
During the March 23 meeting, Pearl River Chancery Clerk Melinda Bowman was asked to report her alleged findings of improprieties and the board approved a motion to have an independent audit done on both sets of books.
Since that time, only one proposal has been submitted, Pearl River County Administrator Adrain Lumpkin told the board.
District V Supervisor Sandy Kane Smith said he wants more proposals submitted. Lumpkin said he has called about four or five firms and no one has expressed interest in conducting the audit.
District III Supervisor Hudson Holliday said he’s been asking himself why the board needs to do another audit.
“When I find myself going down the wrong road, I turn back,” he said. “I know I voted on the audit, but I’ve had some serious resolutions. We listened to one side of the story. The fact is, we are audited every year and are being audited for 2014 right now. Copies of those previous audits are on file in the supervisors and chancery clerk’s office. By state law, if anything wrong is found, it has to be advertised in the paper. The audit last year cost about $45,000.”
In 2013, Hudson said the county spent thousands of dollars when the state auditor and attorney general investigated complaints made at the time about the chancery clerk and nothing was found.
“The people that call me want their roads fixed and I haven’t had anyone call me about an independent audit,” he said. “We can sit here and spend $30 to $40,000 of your money to do this. Johnson has been audited along with everyone else each year. Most people would rather see their money spent on something worthwhile than pay $30 to $40,000 on a witch hunt.”
Bowman told the board that what most people were perplexed about was the fact it took so long for Johnson to let them look at the books.
Lumpkin told Bowman that it is a standard procedure for chancery clerks to utilize something outside of AS/400. Most of them use a form of Quickbooks.
Bowman said she would only use AS/400 as her official record.
Holliday said, the bottom line is, nothing has been found through the investigation.
Bowman, who has the Quickbooks copy of Johnson’s records, said she has not reviewed them yet.
“I could not until I got the Quickbooks program two weeks ago,” she said.
District IV Supervisor Farron Moeller asked Bowman if her initial concern about the documents has changed.
“When you first came to us, it was presented as your number one priority,” Moeller said.
Bowman said it is not her number one priority. It was one of the improprieties she was asked to tell the board about. She said she has already fixed the other improprieties.
Moeller asked her if what’s in Quickbooks was important to her.
“It is, but I’ve been tackling bigger giants at the moment and at some point, when we get settled, I will look into it,” Bowman said.
Holliday made a motion to table the search a firm to conduct another audit until the results of the most recent audit are known. The motion died for lack of a second.