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Some members of Isle of Wight County’s newly formed audit committee are laying blame with the county’s treasurer for what they say could be Isle of Wight’s second consecutive year with a less-than-favorable audit.

The county was up against an Oct. 28 deadline to complete and provide its financial records from the 2023-24 fiscal year, which ended June 30, to a representative of the auditing firm Robinson Farmer Cox.

The county’s 2022-23 audit showed Isle of Wight County Schools had overspent its budgeted expenses for that school year by more than $700,000 and had blamed the deficit on errors deemed a “material weakness,” the most serious classification of bookkeeping discrepancy.

It’s the reason county supervisors voted in August to form the audit committee, whose members are Dale Baugh, Mike Stanton, Isle of Wight County Chief Financial Officer Stephanie Wells, Isle of Wight County Schools CFO Liesl DeVary, Supervisors William McCarty and Renee Rountree and former Supervisor Dick Grice.

But this time, according to county staff, it’s the county itself, not its school system, that’s the issue.

Wells told fellow audit committee members on Oct. 7 that the county’s issues are “related to the incorrect transactions from another department” when committee members inquired about any issues going into the 2023-24 audit process. 

A county resident obtained an audio recording of the meeting via a Freedom of Information Act request and provided a copy to The Smithfield Times.

Though Wells initially did not specify the department to which she was referring, Supervisor William McCarty, who chairs the audit committee, stated – and no one disputed – that she was referencing the treasurer’s office.

Voters elected Julie Slye, a former deputy treasurer for Greensville County, last year over Dahlis Atkins, who at the time was interim treasurer and had been chief deputy treasurer under Judith Wells prior to Wells’ retirement. Slye received 52.2% of the vote to Atkins’ 47.3%.

Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson, in an email to The Smithfield Times, confirmed that there are several issues related to the closeout of the books for 2023-24 that will require the attention of the treasurer. 

“If they are not resolved, those items will potentially be cited as findings in the upcoming audit,” Robertson said.

Stephanie Wells told the committee her department currently has four vacancies, two in finance and two in purchasing, out of nine authorized employees, whose workload is being added to by the discrepancies on the treasurer’s end.

“We can’t close our year because there’s transactions that … have not been corrected in another department, and that’s slowing all the other pieces down, because I can’t do somebody else’s job for them when I’m trying to keep my department above float,” Wells said. “And so while I keep trying to push that process along and help with that process it’s not getting anywhere at present.”

Wells told the committee she’d emailed Slye more than once ahead of a deadline to make a debt payment, and received no response.

“Mrs. Wells and her staff have been well beyond their own duties to make sure that we are keeping up with certain benchmarks … like bond payments on time,” McCarty said.

McCarty said he believed the county was “very close” to missing the payment deadline.

“Hour and a half,” Wells confirmed.

Robertson said Wells ended up making the payment to avoid defaulting.

Slye said she only recently took over banking responsibilities from Wells’ department.

“I started taking the banking responsibilities back into my office at the end of September,” Slye told the Times on Oct. 24. “Up to that point the Finance Department had been helping with wires, transfers, etcetera. The payment in question was during the beginning of my office taking back these responsibilities.”

Because Slye is independently elected and Wells, as CFO, is an appointee of County Administrator Randy Keaton, they have different purviews. The system for receiving tax payments, Wells said, falls under Slye’s department.

“There are some things that I simply can’t do, and one example right now is the corrections,” Wells said.

“What do you mean correction?” asked Rountree.

“If something is posted in the wrong month … they have to be corrected to the correct period so that your general ledger matches your accounts receivables, and it’s just something that has to be done,” Wells told her. “It’s basic accounting.”

“We’re in a situation where things are out of balance, and I can see they’re out of balance, but I need (Slye) to let me take over if I’m going to do it,” Wells said.

Wells told the committee the issue “does not rise to malfeasance.”

“There are items I needed to review, and I have made the necessary corrections for many of the items,” Slye told the Times. “The remaining items, I am still working on the corrections.”

Slye said she too has had to contend with vacancies in her department.

“As a first-time treasurer there is a learning curve in the first year of your term,” Slye said. “I appreciate the assistance from the Finance Department during this transition time. The steps I have been taking to ensure this does not happen again in the future is to write procedures for the responsibilities. My office will be fully staffed starting Nov. 1 for the first time this year.”