The first state audit of Edmonson County Fiscal Court since Wil Cannon became judge-executive in 2015 revealed a few issues in the county government’s day-to-day operations.

Cannon said he thinks the county has done a fine job and the concerns outlined in the audit are fairly standard.

“For all of us being new, I think we’re doing pretty good,” he said. “We’re learning all the time, learning better ways to do things.”

Cannon said he and the two other people who work in his office, treasurer Margaret Skaggs and finance officer Melanie Vincent, have been at their jobs since January 2015, though Skaggs previously served as the county’s finance officer.

One of the audit’s main observations was that the fiscal court’s office has a lack of segregation of duties, which is a frequent citation small county governments receive in their audits.

“The condition is a result of a limited budget, which restricts the number of employees the fiscal court can hire or delegate duties to,” the report said.

A lack of segregation of duties over receipts, disbursements, reconciliations and capital assets increases fiscal court’s risk of misappropriation of assets, errors and inaccurate reporting, the report said.

To combat this, Cannon said he has started comparing purchase orders, receipts, internal records and other documents to make sure there aren’t discrepancies.

“That’s just another set of eyes,” he said. “Between all three of us, we usually catch a problem if there is one.

In his response to this finding, Cannon wrote: “We are attempting to resolve this problem. I have been comparing the amount on each check with the (purchase order) and coversheet and then dating and initialing each cover sheet.”

The audit report also said inadequate internal controls over disbursements resulted in fiscal court paying sales tax on nine hotel rooms.

Cannon said the payment of state tax on the rooms stemmed from a misunderstanding in which one of the county’s magistrates didn’t know the court isn’t supposed to pay state tax on hotel rooms while away on county business.

“That should never happen again,” he said. “Everybody understands you can’t pay state tax. It wastes taxpayer money.”

This discrepancy has since been corrected, Cannon said.

The audit also said fiscal court did not comply with a regulation requiring Skaggs to have Social Security coverage. In his response, Cannon said this will be corrected.

Skaggs said she opted out of Social Security coverage when she was county treasurer because she could and was unaware opting out wasn’t an option when she switched positions.

Overall, Skaggs said the audit was fairly typical, with a normal number of infractions, none of which were severe or especially odd.

“There’s usually not more,” she said. “That’s a usual audit for the county.”

Cannon said he thinks his office is on track to improving its process of seeing to day-to-day affairs, which he thinks will result in a strong audit in four years, the next time the fiscal court is scheduled to receive its next state audit.

“I think by the end of this term, we’ll be on top of things,” he said.