Audit Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to the audit committee for Blount County government, meeting for Thursday, 05/15/2025. Madam clerk, please take the role. Mister chairman,

you have three members present.

Thank you, madam clerk. I will declare that a quorum is in attendance. Moving on to item a, setting of the agenda. Chair will stand for a motion to set the agenda as published for the meeting.

There you go.

Got a motion to set the agenda as published. Do we have a second?

Excuse me.

Excuse Alright. We have a motion and a second to set the agenda as published. You're in favor of setting the agenda as published, vote yes. If you're

not in favor, vote no.

Mister chairman, there are three yes votes.

Thank you, madam clerk. Three yes votes. The motion carries. The agenda is set as published. Item b, approval of the minutes. The chair will stand for a motion to approve the audit committee meeting minutes from 11/12/2024. I've got a motion from committee member McKee, second by committee member Mills. Any discussion on the minutes? Seeing none. If you're in favor of approving the minutes, vote yes. If you're not in favor, vote no.

Mister Chairman, there are three yes votes.

Three yes votes. The minutes are approved. Item c, public input on items on the agenda. Is there anything from the public that wishes to speak to items on the agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to item d, unfinished business. There is none. Item e, new business. Item e one, review of Blount County, Tennessee annual financial report for the year ended 06/30/2024. Alright. I understand our auditors are present. If you'll come forward, and present the audit report.

Alright. So before I get started going over last year's audit, Brian asked me to do, like, a brief overview of kinda what our office does and kind of our audit process. So statewide, our office does about 91 out of 95 counties. We don't do big four. It's divided into four different regions.

So our East Tennessee region does about 23 audits. And then our audit period is split up between, more of an interim time period with spring and summer, and then more of the fall and winter is kind of our busy audit season. So during this interim period, we go through, we look at cash procedures. We look at internal controls, test disbursements, payroll, stuff like that, single audit, whatever we can do. And then more then during the audit time, we go through and look at your accruals that get set up, receivables, payables, transfers, a lot of the budget stuff.

We look at variances between last year and this year, see what changed, what we need to look into, and then we create the audit report. So last year, we issued an unmodified opinion. We did a single audit on the ESSER program, the title one program, and ARPA. And there was one finding related to a cash shortage at the school department, and it was for $34,562. And that that's all I got. So if y'all have any questions for us?

Any questions from the committee for the audit report?

Mhmm. I just sold my fund down. I guess, two questions. One, can you just kinda give give a kind of brief overview over what the one finding what the one finding was, in the audit?

Yeah. So, to our knowledge, what had happened was a employee at the school department clicked on a phishing email that allowed the, outside user to obtain a password to the Kronos UKG payroll system, and they were able to get in and change, I think, it's 34 different payroll accounts. And, I think overall, the county initially lost around $70,000. They recouped about half. So there were still 35,000 outstanding at June 30.

Has there been any further recruitment since then? Okay. Alright. Any other questions regarding the, audit findings? Audit finding, the audit report?

Go ahead, mister Baldwin.

Thank you, mister chair. The the only thing I'd like to add to to this audit finding is we we we have made a number of IT type of upgrades. We now have a dual authentication on all of our accounts. So, you know, some of those more modern things to where we can keep better security, we have put those in place and have those in place. So for this to happen again, somebody would have to get through. They're gonna keep trying, but they would have to get through that second layer of security.

Right. Thank you. Alright. Any other? Go ahead.

One more on that. Is that just for the the the board of education, or is that everything countywide as far as how that goes? Countywide? Countywide.

Yep. Alright. If there's no further discussion or questions, chair will stand for a motion to accept the report. Got a motion from Mr. Mills, second by Ms. McKee. Any discussion? Alright. If you're in favor of accepting the report, vote yes. If you're not in favor, vote no.

Mister chairman, there are three yes votes.

Alright. Three yes votes. The motion carries. The report is accepted. Item e two, setting of the next audit committee meeting.

Okay. I don't think we have any pending, so I guess we'll just, if one comes up, we'll we'll stay in subject to the the call of the chair, and we'll set a meeting at that time. Alright. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for presenting. We appreciate it. And item f, adjournment. If there's no objection, this committee will be adjourned. Hearing none, we're adjourned.