Baton Rouge’s recreation and parks agency had four major instances of money or inventory stolen in the last two years, including the unresolved theft of 11 golf carts worth $16,500 according to a report released Monday by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.
In response to the thefts, BREC officials say they have updated their policies for how money is handled by staff, strengthened controls for golf carts and updated the rules for employee discounts.
The audit also found that too many inactive BREC staff had access to payroll information,  BREC is not balancing its various accounts on a monthly basis and BREC’s accounts payable clerk should not be permitted to set up new vendors in BREC’s system. BREC’s response to the finding was to require additional training for employees on ethics and said it was working to remove inactive employees’ access to the financial information.
“Without complete reconciliation of the general ledger to underlying sub-ledgers and bank statements, those financial reports may be prone to misstatement due to fraud or error,” auditors from Postlethwaite & Netterville wrote in the report. BREC said employees have struggled ever since the agency implemented a new financial system in 2014.
The audit found that BREC’s assets and deferred outflows exceeded its liabilities and deferred inflows at the end of 2017 by more than $173.5 million. Of this amount, about $9.2 million can be used by BREC to meet ongoing obligations to creditors.
Also today, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor released an audit of the city-parish’s finances for last fiscal year, as audited by Postlethwaite & Netterville. It shows the city-parish had an ending fund balance of $463.5 million, an increase of $11.5 million over the previous fiscal year.
