A special investigation by the state finds thousands of dollars of undeposited utility payments by the former utility clerk in the Kossuth County town of Lakota.
State Auditor Mary Mosiman says city officials asked for the audit. “The former city clerk had resigned and a new clerk came in and the new clerk identified inconsistencies between the utility collections and the deposits to the city’s bank account,” Mosiman says. “And then we verified the variance. Basically the cash that was collected, not all of it was deposited to the city’s bank account.”
She says they found $7,768 in undeposited utility fees that were supposed to be deposited by former billing clerk Amber Shelton. Mosiman says they found a difference in the amount of cash actually collected and the amount that was deposited to the city’s account.
Shelton resigned in April of 2015. Mosiman says the undeposited money included billings from July of 2013 until May of 2015. “It is a smaller community — the population is approximately 255 people — so, 7,700 dollars in a period of just under two years that we identified. So in my opinion, that’s quite a lot of money in a relatively short period of time,” according to Mosiman.
She says they’ve recommended the city tighten up its procedures for handling the money, as they always recommend the segregations of duties, and she says even in a small town with a limited staff, there are things the city council and mayor can do to provide the proper oversight. Copies of the report have been filed with the Kossuth County Attorney’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office and the Division of Criminal Investigation.