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The Lake County Council quickly adjourned its first budget workshop Thursday without hearing any presentations from department heads in order to provide a little more time to get a few glitches worked out with the new software.
Scott Schmal, the county’s financial advisor, said he is working with the consultant for Oracle, the county’s new accounting system, to build out a budget module in an effort to automate some of the process.
The program should be able to properly calculate things like salaries and raises, but currently when a figure for a percentage raise is entered in, the resulting numbers generated are not correct.
“We are trying to work with them to get this automates stuff done. We are trying to take advantage of the bells and whistles available with Oracle,” Schmal said.
The data entry issue involving the auditor’s office and the conversion to the Oracle software is unrelated to the issues prompting the delay in the budget process, he said.
Schmal said the budget issue with the software will be resolved by Tuesday’s next budget workshop, but the data entry issue will not be resolved for some time.
The data was entered in a way that prevents it from being generated into a report. The State Board of Accounts in August ended a routine audit of the county’s finances after investigators could not find the information needed.
At the time, county officials said investigators could not find the information available or the cash balances they needed to successfully complete the audit.
Kendra Leatherman, SBOA general counsel, said at the time SBOA policy is to not comment on audits before they are complete and the office considers the Lake County audit ongoing.
The fact that the county is entering the budget process without a firm grasp of what its actual cash balance is due to the data entry issue. County officials say the information was entered into the system, but the State Board of Accounts said the information is not there, so it is unable to determine where the county’s accounts currently stand.
Schmal said he does not expect the numbers to be wildly different than they were last year, but officials need to be conservative in approving this year’s budget requests in order to maintain a strong cash reserve.
“I’m hopeful if there are any changes to the beginning balances it will be absorbed by the reserves,” Schmal said.
Michael Repay, D-Hammond, president of the Board of Commissioners, said the body solicited proposals and interviewed several firms before selecting Baker Tilly US LLP. He said the firm was deemed the most qualified to do the job because of its past experience with the county, the state, the area of government finance and the Oracle accounting system.