Fire district audit half a year late

A bad bookkeeper and poor record-keeping are being blamed for the six-month delay in the release of the Boone County Fire Protection District’s yearly financial audit.

Yearly audits for the publicly funded volunteer fire district are typically finished by April.

Members of the fire district’s three-member governing board say two separate audits detailing the accounting problems should be finished by the Columbia public accountancy firm of Marberry, Miller & Bales P.C., in the next few weeks.

The first audit, which covers all of 2005, is set to be finished and presented at the fire district’s next board meeting on Oct. 24.

An unprecedented second audit, covering only the first six months of 2006, is expected soon after.

“The second audit is going to be more detailed because the accounting system doesn’t have anything recorded properly,” said board Treasurer Kay Murray, who also acts as the county’s treasurer. “You’re not able to see how the fire district spent its money, or who received it.”

The fire district’s governing board has largely cast the blame for the delay on former financial director Andrea Meinhart, who resigned in July after being placed on paid administrative leave following disclosure of what the fire district has described as accounting errors.

At the time Meinhart, 43, resigned, she had worked for the fire district for about 18 months. She could not be reached for comment and has not said anything publicly since the release of a lengthy grievance she filed against the fire district. In that grievance, Meinhart said she discovered mistakes in previous audits filed by the fire district and said those mistakes were covered up.

“If Sue Miller, of Marberry, Miller & Bales, has found accounting mistakes in (fiscal 2005) during a standard audit, what was the nature of mistakes from prior fiscal years?” Meinhart wrote in her grievance dated July 17. “Has Sue been directed to dig as deep as possible to find issues that have been long-standing? Was the scope of her audit clearly defined by an engagement letter to uncover (fiscal 2004) and earlier issues?”

Miller did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Meinhart wrote that fire district leaders routinely told her to scale back her accounting practices.

“Until I developed a clearer understanding of what was going on, I was just a cog in the machine which was operating, in my opinion, as a shell game. The message portrayed depended entirely upon the recipient and the facts were manipulated to make them in agreement. Repeatedly, I was told I was ‘working too hard.’”

Meinhart worked as financial director of Community Alternative Training, Inc. a Columbia nonprofit social service provider for people with disabilities, and is a co-owner and instructor at the Columbia Canine Sports Center.

Meinhart’s attorney, David Moen of Jefferson City, said Meinhart has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

“It’s her belief that based upon the information and instruction she was given by Fire Chief (Steve Paulsell) and (Assistant Fire Chief Sharon) Curry, they are responsible,” Moen said.

Fire district board member Shelly Dometrorch said Meinhart didn’t give auditors the district’s financial information until April, when audits are supposed to be finished. Murray blamed Meinhart’s entering of financial data into the fire district’s old accounting software program, which has since been replaced.

Board members say the detailed audits reveal sloppy accounting, not stolen funds. The result, they say, has been costly and time-consuming.

“It’s been very arduous,” said board member Dave Griggs. “Every credit card receipt, every check has been scrutinized.”

The fire district, which has 14 paid employees and more than 300 volunteers and operates Missouri Task Force 1, one of the country’s 28 federal urban search-and-rescue teams, has an annual operating budget of about $3.1 million.

The fire district board re-hired former financial director Doug Harris after Meinhart resigned.