In his much-anticipated summary of New Mexico’s governmental financial audits, New Mexico State Auditor Tim Keller listed Doña Ana County as one of only four counties statewide with a clean bill of health.
“This report is validation of the transparency and sound stewardship of Doña Ana County’s use of taxpayer funds,” said Doña Ana County Manager Julia T. Brown. “In fact, Doña Ana County has received clean audits with no findings in each of the last four years, which is testament to sound budgeting, tight controls and smart use of public funds.”
In the report, released yesterday, Keller says it will be an annual exercise designed to “compile information that would otherwise remain buried deep within thousands of pages of annual audits. This shines a light on how public dollars in state and local governments are protected and managed. The comprehensive, statewide report is designed to make audit information from state and local governments more transparent to the public, legislators, and oversight bodies.”
In all, the report looked at 449 governmental entities across the state. The report says New Mexico’s 33 counties represent 7 percent of all audited entities, and counties had 11 percent of all material non-compliance, material weaknesses and significant deficiency findings.
Doña Ana County had none, and Keller made no modifications to Doña Ana County’s 2014 external audit, which was the base document upon which the report was compiled for all entities.
The report singles out Cibola County, the Public Education Department, Taos Municipal Schools, Albuquerque Public Schools, Santa Fe Public Schools, the City of Gallup, the City of Lovington, the Village of Columbus, the City of Albuquerque, and the City of Santa Rosa as having “significant issues or problems.”
The report and supporting data are available online at http://osanm.org/government_accountability_office
Information from Dona Ana County