Comptroller's Report: Stolen County Money

Here is a disturbing report from Tom Humphrey from his Knoxville News blog.

More than $700,000 of taxpayer money was stolen from county governments across Tennessee during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010.

A county-by-county breakdown can be found here.

Robertson County reported a cash shortage from the Sanitation Department. Here is the provided ‘explanation’ from the Comptroller’s report.

On July 14, 2010, the Sanitation Department brought their July 8, 2010, collections to the Finance Department. Since the Finance Department employee assigned the responsibility of counting collections was out of the office, the collections were placed in a locked filing cabinet to be counted later that day. When the Finance Department employee counted the collections, it was determined that receipts exceeded collections by $200. Officials could not determine who was responsible for the $200 cash shortage because all Sanitation Department employees use the same cash drawer, and the cash was not immediately counted by the Finance Department 40 Exhibit C in the presence of the Sanitation Department employee. The director of the Sanitation Department replaced the missing $200 from personal funds on July 30, 2010. This shortage was the result of a lack of management oversight to mitigate risks related to safeguarding assets. This finding has been discussed with the district attorney general.