CANTON, Miss. (AP) — Jeff Goodwin, director of the Mississippi state auditor’s compliance division, was con
genial while describing to Canton officials how the office has taken $352,000 of the city’s revenue to pay for past-due audits
– the first time Auditor Shad White has exercised this authority.
“I didn’t write the law. Auditor White didn’t write the law, but we’r
e charged with enforcing it,” Goodwin said at the Canton Board of Aldermen meeting Tuesday.
Canton is one of 68 local governments across Mississippi that received an auditor’s letter in March, putting officials on notice of their delinquent audits.
The notices went as far north as Farmington near the Tennessee
lf Coast. They spanned from mid-sized cities like McComb, to rural towns
like Coffeeville, to tiny villages like Beauregard – a signal of widespread municipal finance concerns.
This is especially true in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, during which Congress dolled out billions to local governments nationwide, neces
sitating more accounting, and city and town halls dealt with the fallout of a reduced labor force.
Incomplete audits create a host of problems, including reducing a
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city’s ability to borrow money and prohibiting it from drawing down federal grants.
Audits are important, despite not appearing urgent, said Billy Morehead, Mississippi College accounting professor and member of the Mississippi Public Procurement Review Board.
“All of a sudden, the can’s been kicked down the road and the municipality is at risk of losing a variety of funding,
a lot of their federal funds, but also their credit ratings,” Morehead said. “It could be catastrophic to some of these places.”
The March letters required compliance within 30 days or the auditor would request the Mississippi Department of Rev
enue to divert sales tax dollars from the municipality – the estimated price of bringing the audits up to date, plus 50% of that amount the auditor is allowed to ret
ain for its administrative cost of hiring the accounting firm and acting as a third party on the reports.