OpenCdA has learned that as a result of diligent reconciliation of Kootenai County financial records, an alert employee in the Kootenai County Clerk’s Office has found about $541,903.73 sitting in a District Court account. It gets better.
According to copies of letters provided pursuant to an Idaho Public Records Law request by OpenCdA, Kootenai County Clerk Cliff Hayes notified the cities of Post Falls, Rathdrum, and Coeur d’Alene as well as the Board of Kootenai County Commissioners that they would be receiving disbursements from the District Court fund for Prosecutor Reimbursements due the recipients. The disbursements had been made for about 30 years, but in 2006 the Kootenai County Clerk’s Office stopped making them.
County Clerk Cliff Hayes noted that the money had been properly collected and correctly tracked, but it had not been disbursed since 2006. Hayes explained that a software change in 2006 related to the Idaho Statewide Trial Court Automated Records System (ISTARS) Technology Fund likely resulted in the disbursements to the cities and County erroneously not being made after 2006.
OpenCdA appreciates the County Clerk’s Office employee who saw a discrepancy between funds collected and funds disbursed and then sought to have the discrepancy reconciled. Though the aggregate amount is significant, over a half million dollars, the periodic disbursements that should have been made were relatively small. Good for the employee who paid attention to the small discrepancies and followed through to allow the Clerk’s Office to ultimately disburse the funds.
OpenCdA does wonder, though, why the finance directors or treasurers for the cities didn’t notice in and after 2006 that money which had been coming in periodically from the County Clerk suddenly stopped. If they had noticed and asked the County Clerk, their cities’ coffers might have been slightly fatter.
In any event, County Clerk Cliff Hayes’ letters notified the recipients that his office would be making Prosecutor Reimbursements monthly to them along with email notification of the amounts.
That is excellent work by the Clerk’s Office employee. In addition to keeping up with the County’s regular day to day business, Mr. Hayes obviously has his hands full confirming the accuracy of and/or correcting all that took place before he took office. With this news one has to wonder what other matters the cities’ finance directors or treasurers have failed to address.
Comment by up river — August 21, 2013 @ 1:05 pm
up river,
It’s all the more an accomplishment because six, nearly seven, years had passed since the money stopped going to those three cities, and none of those cities’ well-paid and supposedly professional finance department staff realized their city wasn’t getting money it should have been getting.
Maybe that’s why no one has read about this in the skewspaper.
Comment by Bill — August 23, 2013 @ 11:11 am