Audit: Official got blank checks during time he stole money from Kentucky county
It’s no secret there were some financial problems in Estill County government a few years ago because a former judge-executive pleaded guilty in connection with stealing money, but a new audit includes additional detail on the problems.
The new findings included that $4,405 received by the animal shelter for adoption fees was never deposited — meaning it may have been stolen — and that the county paid for more than $5,700 in purchases that may have been for personal use because of poor controls over county credit cards.
The questioned spending included purchases of tools, deck-building materials and appliances such as a window air conditioner that cost $807 and an electric range that cost $474.
Many of the items were not listed in the county’s inventory during the audit, the report said.
The report from the office of state Auditor Mike Harmon, released Tuesday, said findings would be referred to Kentucky State Police, Attorney General Daniel Cameron and the state Department for Local Government for possible follow-up.
The audit covered the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017. The judge-executive during the year was Wallace Taylor.
Taylor resigned later in 2017 and was indicted in 2018 on one felony charge of abuse of public trust.
Taylor pleaded guilty, admitting he stole more than $38,000 from grant money the county had received, according to an October 2019 news release from then-Attorney General Andy Beshear, whose office prosecuted.
Taylor, who died earlier this year, was sentenced to three years in prison, diverted for five years. The sentence also included $38,850 in restitution to the county, according to the release.
Taylor stole some of the money from a grant the county had received for a bathroom-renovation project at the courthouse in Irvine, according to the audit issued Tuesday.
The audit cited numerous accounting problems during the 2017 fiscal year, including inaccuracies in employee pay and retirement withholding; spending without required purchase orders; inadequate tracking of spending; failure to get bids on some purchases; and employees sharing passwords to the financial accounting system, creating a risk of “undetected fraud, errors, misstatements.”
There were so many accounting shortcomings in the 2017 fiscal year that auditors couldn’t sort through the books well enough to express an opinion on the county’s financial statement.
In a response, current Judge-Executive Donnie Russell Watson, a Republican elected after Taylor left office, and other officials said the county has made a number of changes to fix the problems identified in the audit, or is in the process of doing so.
Responding to a finding about one way Taylor apparently stole money — requesting blank checks from the treasurer — the county’s current management wanted to make clear those days are gone.
“THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN. PERIOD,” the response said.
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 10:27 AM.
