School auditor admits controversial financial discrepancy was error on his part

by Kirk Boxleitner

kboxleitner@masoncounty.com

A special meeting of the Hot Springs County School Board on March 28 that saw Jean Skelton persist in calling for specifics on the incorrect mapping of funds ended with auditor Jason Lund realizing that the error was his own, and not that of former school district business manager Chauncy Johnson.

Lund had opened by clarifying there was no “moving of expenditures between classifications,” even as he admitted from the start that the number of audits conducted had precluded him determining the specific accounts that had been mapped incorrectly, while Johnson initially blamed a supposed oversight on his part, by requesting a budget amendment in response to overspending.

Jean Skelton’s concern was that taxpayers are entitled to accurate reports of financial statements, while no one could outline the exact financial mapping errors.

Even before such questions were settled, Lund deemed it “unusual” to spend “so much time on something so far in the past,” since rated its “risk perspective” as “so low.”

Before Lund’s admission, Johnson categorized what he believed to be his own fault as a clerical error, whereas Jean Skelton regarded it as a more serious financial misstep, since she judged the district’s internal controls to be “weak,” which was why she saw the “primary control” as the budget.

“You’re sort of insinuating that nobody looks at these numbers and says, ‘Wow, why is that off,’ or ‘Why is that expenditure up so much?’ Johnson said. “It doesn’t mean we’re not looking at those numbers if we don’t ask questions about them in public.”

Lund agreed with board chair Sherman Skelton that no funds were missing, but when Jean Skelton agreed with Lund that this seemed attributable to “honest-to-goodness accounting mistakes” rather than any fraud waste or abuse, board trustee Jennifer Axtell rebuked her for pressing the point for the past three months.

Sherman Skelton ultimately recommended that Jean Skelton file a public information request, so the school district could bill her for any further time used to gather information on this subject.

Prior to his realization, Lund had reiterated that, on a scale of his concerns, “This is the very least thing that I’m personally concerned about,” because as a mapping issue, “It seemed real plain and boring to me, so I was kind of surprised by the rumors I heard about missing money.”

Lund called for the district to “move forward in a positive manner,” with what seemed to be “good employees.”

New school district business manager Jessica Benefiel, when asked what measures were being taken to avoid such errors in the future, determined that existing board-approved policies hadn’t been followed or enforced strongly enough, which she now seeks to address by shoring up training among staff who have experienced significant turnover.

When Lund discovered the error on his part that accounted for the roughly $672,000 whose incorrect mapping Jean Skelton had kept asking about, not only did Lund note that this meant the district was in compliance after all, but Jean Skelton pointed out that Johnson’s budget amendment was actually “100% right.”

She concluded, “I know I have been a pain in your guys’ hiney, but I really appreciate getting to the bottom of this.”

When he contacted the Thermopolis Independent record after the meeting, Sherman Skelton recalled some of the accusations that had been directed toward Johnson, Superintendent Dustin Hunt and the board, from the alleged misuse of funds to dereliction of duty, which had even led to some calls for the board to dismiss Hunt.

“I personally sent a text message to a community member on Dec. 19, indicating that the audit finding was because of a misidentification of funds in instructional support, when they should have been in general support,” Sherman Skelton said. “That is exactly what the auditor determined at our meeting. The only difference was that we thought we made the error, when in fact it was an error on the auditor’s end.”

Had the board responded with a “knee-jerk” dismissal, Sherman Skelton doesn’t doubt the school district would have wound up in a wrongful termination lawsuit, costing the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“The last three months have taken a lot of time that would otherwise have been devoted to the large workload that is already expected, and compounded it by trying to provide information for something months prior,” said Sherman Skelton, who hopes this will provide closure and allow the district to move forward productively.