BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
A recent piece of correspondence has instructed the city of Lawtey to get its act together.
In a May 6 letter addressed to Mayor Jimmie Scott, the Florida’s Legislature’s Joint Legislative Auditing Committee informed the city it is aware of potential violations of Florida statutes and requested a response.
The committee dives in addressing budget transparency and the city’s perceived failure to post tentative and final budgets online, along with any budget amendments. If a municipality does not operate its own website, it must transmit the documents to be posted on the county’s website. Final budgets must be posted for a minimum of two years.
The county has posted one-page budget summaries for Lawtey for fiscal years 2023 and 2024, and those are the only documents available. They are not located on the link provided for the city of Lawtey, however, but on the same page as the county’s budget documents. The committee’s letter indicates staff found no evidence the budgets were posted and has asked specific questions about when the documents were provided and posted.
The next concern was the process for adopting the budgets and whether the city has been adopting the tentative and final budgets in separate public hearings as required. The letter states committee staff were informed that a statement about the timing of the hearings in the past five city audits was incorrect in its claim that the public hearings were conducted in July and August. One claim is that the city postponed a tentative budget hearing and never rescheduled it, proceeding directly to the final hearing.
The committee has asked for details and documentation that the past two budgets were adopted per state law.
Another complaint to the committee claimed the city has failed to comply with public record requests in timely manner. The committee has asked for a copy of the city’s public record policy, if one exists, in addition to a summary for how public records requests are fulfilled. This includes the city’s policy on providing time-sensitive documents prior to a meeting when requested.
On to traffic citation revenue, state law requires a municipality to report to the committee if traffic citation revenue makes up 33% or more of a police department’s annual budget. The committee found Lawtey reported that information for fiscal years 2015-2017, but not since then, leading the committee to ask if the threshold in still being met but the city is failing to report it.
According to the letter, committee staff found it was being surpassed based on the city’s most recent financial audit for Fiscal Year 2022.
Additional reporting requirements to the Florida Legislature’s Economic and Demographic Research have been in place since 2019, but Lawtey has never complied. This includes providing details about how much the government spends per resident, how much debt the city carries per resident, the average salary of municipal employees, the percentage of the budget spent on employee salaries and benefits, etc.
The city has been asked if it intends to comply going forward, which means providing the required information by Oct. 15 each year.
Finally, the letter addresses Lawtey’s habitual tardiness in the submission of its annual financial reports and financial audits. For nine of the past 11 years, the committee states the city has failed to provide one or both reports on time. Both are due 45 days after the audit is delivered to the city and no later than nine months after the end of the fiscal year. Lawtey’s past three financial audits were all late, one by as long as 52 days. The annual financial report was late all nine years, with a range of 29 to 200 days after they were due.
Of all the problems mentioned, committee staff stated problems with this financial reporting endangers state revenue for the city.
“Other Florida municipalities have lost a total of over $5 million dollars as a result of the committee’s enforcement of these financial reporting requirements. The city should take steps to ensure that it submits these financial reports more timely, or understand that it is at risk to lose municipal revenue sharing and half-cent sales tax funds,” according to the letter.
Informational resources were attached to assist the city meet its obligations, but the committee closed the letter by stating a legislator, citizen petition or local government action could request the committee to direct the Florida Auditor General to conduct an operational audit of Lawtey, as previously occurred in Starke and Hampton, nearly costing the latter its charter.
“The focus of an operational audit is to evaluate management’s performance in establishing and maintaining internal controls and administering assigned responsibilities in accordance with laws, rules, regulations, contracts, grant agreements, and other guidelines. The city commission may request an operational audit with a majority vote in a public meeting,” according to the committee.
Lawtey would bear the cost of undertaking such and audit.
