Idaho Mountain Express: County financials get thumbs-up

Friday, March 14, 2014

County financials get thumbs-up

Auditor says he is impressed with bookkeeping, money management

By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer

    An outside auditor has given Blaine County’s financial statements a clean bill of health.
   “I’m very impressed with Blaine County,” said Curtis Stocker, a partner with Rupert, Idaho-based accounting firm Condie Stocker & Associates, during a county commissioners meeting Tuesday. “I think you’ve done very well in keeping the financial position of Blaine County very secure.”
   The annual audit is required by state law.

“I think you’ve done very well in keeping the financial position of Blaine County very secure.”
Curtis Stocker
Auditor

   In an interview, county Treasurer Vicki Heuett said the main practical use of the 81-page audit is to support the county’s credit rating for bond investors. In 2007, Moody’s rated two bond issues to fund a new county Sheriff’s Office and jail as Aaa and Aa2, considered “prime” and “high grade” ratings.
   Stocker made several suggestions for minor improvements in the county’s financial reporting:
- Better organization of files for federal and state grants.
- Weekly rather than every-two-weeks deposits for Probation Department funds.
- An update of the county’s investment policy to specify the types of investments allowed.
   Commissioner Larry Schoen said he preferred to leave Heuett leeway to choose the investments she thinks are best.
   “We’ve tried to stay out of micro-managing,” he said. “I think that if we had a new treasurer, someone without her decades of experience, we might want to revisit that.”
   Commissioner Jacob Greenberg joked that if Stocker hadn’t come up with some ideas for improvements, he wouldn’t have been doing his job.
Greg Moore: gmoore@mtexpress.com

acheter cialis
comprar cialis
buy cialis

About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged: