Missouri auditor subpoenas Clay County, says local leaders are trying to evade audit
Roughly a month after launching an audit of Clay County government, Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway has issued a subpoena for records, saying her office has faced delays and evasive behavior from county leaders.
The audit was spurred by a local citizens’ group that submitted a petition requesting that Galloway examine county financial records and other concerns brought forward by whistleblowers.
On Thursday, Galloway said in a news release that a subpoena was issued after her office made multiple requests for information and responses were delayed by the county officials and communication from multiple outside law firms.
“Within the first six weeks of this process, my team has encountered delays, roadblocks and evasive responses that make it challenging to complete audit work in a cost-effective way on behalf of the taxpayers of Clay County,” Galloway said in a statement.
“My auditors are requesting basic information, and there is no reason why it should be this difficult.”
The subpoena requested assistant County Administrator Nicole Brown to appear at Galloway’s Kansas City office on Feb. 18 and turn over all minutes from the Clay County Commission meetings for 2017 and 2018.
Auditors also asked for records kept on computers, smart phones and other devices.
In lieu of a personal appearance, Brown has the option of mailing Galloway’s office the requested county records by Feb. 11.
Clay County officials responded by filing a lawsuit alleging that Galloway went beyond the scope of her duties outlined in the Missouri Constitution. That includes requesting emails between county officials and their attorneys and minutes from closed County Commission meetings.
Joseph Hatley, an attorney who is representing the county, said in a Jan. 29 letter that the requests from the state auditor, “reflect a desire to engage in a generalized performance audit of every function of the County government.”
Galloway said in a statement that her office has a legal duty to conduct the audit.
“The Clay County Commission’s legal action today seeks to silence the voices of thousands of its own citizens who asked for their government to be audited,” she said in a statement. “More concerning is the idea that Clay County taxpayer dollars could be used to prevent an audit these same taxpayers requested.”
Opponents have said the audit will cost too much and is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Galloway began the audit with a meeting on Dec. 18, when audit staff said that any effort to slow down their work could impact when the audit could be completed and how much it would eventually cost the county.
The audit is estimated to cost the county $100,000 to $150,000 based on the costs of other audits done for counties of similar size. Galloway’s office has said previously it could take up to a year to complete.
The citizen petition requesting the audit was initiated following allegations of questionable spending, budget cuts used as retaliation, and official resistance to public scrutiny. In June, the auditor’s office said it had received more than a dozen whistleblower contacts related to Clay County.
A group of residents started collecting signatures for a petition after some noticed the county failed to pay its electric bill and was close to getting its power shut off last May.
In 2017, the state attorney general’s office charged a county employee with record tampering after the county clerk noticed someone cut the signatures of a commissioner off of some documents.
The employee, Laurie Portwood, later reached an agreement with the attorney general to defer prosecution for two years if she agreed to not tamper with other government documents in the future and completed 40 hours of community service
Following that incident, the county commission voted 2-1 to remove the county clerk, Megan Thompson, as the county’s custodian of records. County records obtained by The Star in June showed the county paid more than $57,000 to the law firm Spencer Fane to process all of its public record requests since Thompson was stripped of that role.
Clay County was last audited by the state in 1990 after a formal request from the commission, according to the auditor’s office.
This story was originally published January 31, 2019 at 5:56 PM.
