The District 23 district attorney believes a criminal investigation is warranted regarding the findings of the Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector’s forensic audit into the Lincoln County E-911 Trust Authority.
DA Adam Panter made the comment in a press statement release on Feb. 12 -- the same day the audit report was made public after discussion with the audit manager and his own look into the report.
“I am thankful for the work of Oklahoma State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd for her office’s thorough investigation and dedication to fiscal responsibility of taxpayer funds,” he said.
County Commissioner Lee Doolen agreed, saying that he has requested that the district attorney seek a multi-county grand jury investigation. If theAttorney General’s Office declines, he and the DA agree to explore filing charges locally in district court.
“I have been saying since day one of this is that we need to put some people in jail because this is the taxpayers’money, flat out,” Doolen said.
The audit, released on Feb. 12, was requested by Panter with insistence from Doolen and covered July 1, 2019, to Sept. 14, 2023, the tenure of former director Miranda Smith.
StateAuditorCindyByrd found that Smith altered over 85 percent of her timesheets, claiming more hours than she worked; issued 28 additional payroll checks to herself; and added unauthorized hours to her leave balance. In total, Smith received $34,329 in wages she didn’t earn.
The audit also found that the Authority Board was behind on payments to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Oklahoma Public Employees Health and Welfare Plan (OPEHW), and the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), totalling $69,478. The auditors couldn’t find if the Board was aware of past due payments, as the issue was never mentioned in Board meeting minutes.
“LincolnCounty’sE-911 Trust Authority created an environment that allowed abuse to flourish,” Byrd said. “The Board members were not conducting regular reviews of bank statements and payroll records. They did not require expenditures to be reported to the Board prior to payment. If Board members had followed rudimentary oversight practices, they could have stopped the abuse the moment it started.”
The E-911 Authority is its own entity in Lincoln County and was voted in by the people as a trust authority. This means that it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of the County, and the County has no direct oversight, according to Doolen. While a commissioner does serve as a board member, it’s a non-voting role.
“EversinceIcaughtwind of embezzlement and other potential issues, I stepped in as the board member and have been pushing them pretty hard on getting things right,” Doolen said. “We had to step in and bail them out because they hadn’t paid their taxes, they hadn’t paid their bills, and they weren’t paying employees properly. It was really bad.”
Doolen said since the County stepped in, there is now a contract in place that considers all 911 employees as county employees. Lincoln County now handles payroll, payroll taxes, and pays employee benefits and retirement. The Authority then reimburses the County for payroll costs. The County also ensured that past-due obligations were paid.
“I’ve been working with the Board, with a lot of pushback, to get protections for money in place. I’ve written bylaws and other measures, but they have not been enacted yet,” Doolen said. “If it looks like they can’t or won’t get on the right track, I will be calling for a public vote to dismantle them… It’s very important to make sure that we handle taxpayers’ money with integrity and openness, and we’ve got to nip all those problems in the bud.”
The forensic audit report said that during Smith’s tenure from July 1, 2019, to September 14, 2023, she received $12,287 in improper payroll by manually altering timecards and falsifying hours worked. She was then paid $4,016 for unearned compensatory time without adequate documentation or Board approval, also done by altering her timecard. Lastly, Smith was paid $18,026 for leave hours that were improperly added to leave balances. In one instance, the leave time was added twice for the same week when two separate checks were received for the same payroll period, the report said.
Additionally, according to employee guidelines, an employee is allowed a maximum of 53 paychecks per year -- 26 bi-weekly payroll checks for regular pay, 26 bi-weekly payroll checks for compensatory pay and one bonus check limited to a max of 60 hours. Between fiscal year 2020 and 2022, Smith received 28 more checks than allowed.
As director, Smith was allowed to track and monitor time clock entries, adjust time entries for all employees, approve payroll, create payroll and print and sign checks without the Board’s approval, the report said.
Payroll taxes were found to have been taken out of employee wages, but were either never remitted or remitted late to the IRS, OPEHW and the OPERS, the report said.