Local Democratic party precinct committee members have the daunting task of replacing the Delphi City Clerk-Treasurer after today, Wednesday. The duly elected official has left the office after serving not quite two years of a four-year elected term. She was appointed before the last election to fill the position vacated when the former clerk was convicted of a felony.

There are many problems for the next clerk to solve as soon as possible. The new person must hit the ground running to make things right for Delphi.

According to “Here’s Your Indiana Government,” simply put, the clerk-treasurer is responsible for the fiscal affairs of the city. The elected official is responsible to manage and direct the city’s finances and accounts and to provide reports and sign and issue all warrants (checks) for the city, among other duties.

Many of those duties have not been adequately executed in the past several years and the city’s financial picture could be considered murky, at best, because of it. The Democrats must choose someone competent and willing to dig in and do the job of fixing the problems – no matter what. The citizens of Delphi deserve no less.

Some of the problems which must be rectified were detailed in the Indiana State Board of Accounts 2008 audit recently released. Auditors noted the detailed customer deposit register does not reconcile with the customer deposit amount recorded on the general ledger. A similar comment was made in the last four audits, which makes this the fifth time the problem has been stated. It should not be allowed to exist any longer for the taxpayers of Delphi.

In addition, federal grant money draw downs have not been spent in a timely fashion. As a result, the city could be in jeopardy of losing federal grant monies in the future.

Auditors noted the city did not maintain an accurate inventory of capital assets, which was also noted in the previous four reports. Payroll withholding reports and payments were not always filed accurately. Proper reporting and payments could not be verified.

Record balances were not accurately reconciled to depository balances (city checkbook does not agree with the bank statement). Many posting errors reported in the audit were also noted for the past five audits. However, that is to be expected when the city checkbook does not balance with the bank statement and no one ensures they balance accounts monthly, as dictated by state statute.

Some city transactions were recorded as “negative” receipts and disbursements. The issues were noted in the past three audits.

The city incurred and subsequently paid, finance charges for delinquent payment of vendor invoices during 2008.

“We noted several deficiencies in the internal control system of the city related to financial transactions and reporting which could result in a material (serious) misstatement of the financial statements not being prevented or detected,” as reported in the audit.

In short, Delphi has a history of sloppy bookkeeping in the clerk-treasurer’s office that has reached the level of concern by those who take the time to read the audit report, which can be found at http://www.in.gov/sboa/.

Hopefully every city council member has read it and will not be silent about the issues facing that office and the city in general. City council members should insist, in public to know exactly what is being done to resolve the problems and require progress reports until each issue is resolved. Constituents deserve at least this much.

Choose the next Delphi Clerk-Treasurer carefully. Do not allow the mistakes to continue to accumulate. This situation has gone on long enough and you now have the opportunity to make the city financial picture much more clear, as it should be.