This post was originally published on this site.
The North Carolina State Auditor’s Office is conducting two audits
on the city of Rocky Mount, WRAL News learned Friday.
One for Rocky
Mount’s colossal mismanagement of its finances, hemorrhaging money,
spending way more than it brought in, and telling its residents that it needed
to find $30 million dollars in 10 months, which ultimately involved laying off
100 city employees.
Other WRAL Top Stories
WRAL News learned there’s a second audit to examine this
perplexing issue about residents
receiving two bills, just days apart.
Timeline of Rocky Mount’s financial crisis: Millions
of dollars missing, higher bills and layoffs
City leaders said customers were not double-billed, but they
do say there were failures in the process. However, those failures remain
unclear.
The city of Rocky Mount held a public meeting about the
utility billing issue earlier January. Some people said they weren’t feeling
much better by the end of it.
“I was hoping the final result of this meeting would give
them comfort, calm their nerves [and] reduce their stress,” Ward 6 City Council
Member Tom Harris said at the meeting. “Quite honestly, you haven’t done that.”
WRAL News has received a ton of emails from people who are
confused about the utility situation and the financial mismanagement.
WRAL News spoke with the North Carolina State Auditor’s
Office on Friday. The office couldn’t say when these reports will be finished
and released to the public.
In January, Boliek told WRAL News it could be released
in days or weeks, but he was reluctant to put a timeline on it:
“I don’t like putting timelines on this because I don’t
want to hamstring our team from being able to follow every lead,” Boliek said. “I
do know that we have taken numerous different paths toward taking full look at
the finances of the Rocky Mount, and again, it’s important to get the facts
right, to be data driven, and to let the public know exactly money is being
spent.
“And the public can expect a very professional, thorough,
data driven approach to the final audit result in Rocky Mount.”
North Carolina State Auditor’s Office also looking into
Cary
On Thursday night, the initial results came out of the state’s investigation
into former Cary Town Manager Sean Stegall’s overspending and lack of
transparency.
“We are learning something very simple, Cary’s former town
manager shared incomplete information and/or different information with different
people,” said Assistant Town Manger Danna Widmar during Thursday’s meeting.
A WRAL News viewer asked how does the state’s audit of Cary’s
finances differ from the legally required audit delivered to the Local
Government Commission.
North Carolina’s Local Government Commission reviews audits
from every municipality in the state, including the town of Cary and city of Rocky
Mount.
However, those don’t go nearly as in-depth as what the state
auditor’s office does.
WRAL News asked former North Carolina State Auditor Beth
Wood about it.
“There can be fraud going on and a financial statement audit
will not catch it,” Wood said. “It is not built to catch fraud, it may stumble
on it, but a financial statement audit that is being required of our cities and
our counties, there is no requirement that you will look for fraud or go after
fraud, and there can be fraud going on and the auditor misses it.”
The North Carolina Local Government Commission conducts
audits mostly to make sure a municipality is in decent enough shape to do
things like take out a loan.
The North Carolina State Auditor’s Office comes in when an
investigation is necessary, looking for fraud or wasteful spending.
WRAL News is trying to learn why the Local Government Commission
didn’t catch the financial problems in Rocky Mount.