SALISBURY – Officials in Wicomico County this week sought the input of the director of administration after volunteer fire companies and local auditing firms voiced concerns regarding financial reporting requirements.
On Tuesday, the Wicomico County Council met with Wayne Strausburg, the county’s director of administration, to address concerns the county received in response to a letter it sent to county volunteer fire and ambulance companies last month.
The letter outlined county fire and ambulance grants awarded for fiscal year 2018 and requested the companies submit a financial form and audit report in order to receive the funding.
Councilman Marc Kilmer told Strausburg of concerns from individuals in the fire companies and asked if the audit would be used to change how money is awarded.
“A couple of people have expressed the concern that this information may be used to set county appropriations … Is that the intention of this?” he said.
Strausburg replied the county had no plans to change how funds were allocated.
“We’ve certainly had no discussions to that effect,” he said. “We are simply attempting to conform to the county code.”
Councilman Joe Holloway also shared some volunteer fire companies’ concerns about the privacy of the audit and inquired about the companies’ earnings from fundraising events.
“Volunteer fire companies raise their own money and some of them do better than others and I think that’s one of the concerns about this,” he said. “Will we be auditing what they earn as far as doing their chicken barbecues and all that?”
Strausburg replied the county had no intent to make the audits public and would only inquire about the use of public funds, but deferred the question to Robert Taylor, the council attorney.
Taylor explained that the county code required volunteer fire and ambulance companies to report on the use of public funds.
“In the code it does say a report showing the expenditure,” he said. “So I don’t think it would necessarily include any income.”
In addition to the fire companies’ concerns, Council President John Cannon shared the concerns of local auditing firms that had called about the letter, which offered fire companies without an audit a group audit rate from PKS, Inc.
Cannon said he appreciated the intent of the letter, but felt endorsing a particular auditing firm could hurt other businesses.
“They were extremely upset with that,” he said. “They questioned as to what the ethical standards might be from an auditing perspective. I wanted to bring that to your attention so you are aware of that. It may be something where we need to pull back on.”
Strausburg said an opinion from the attorney general’s office held that there was no ethical violation.
“We are simply trying to minimize the cost to the volunteer companies,” he said.
Strausburg said the county’s discussion on financial reporting requirements of volunteer fire and ambulance companies at budget work sessions led them to discover the county had an existing code that required the companies to submit a financial report on the expenditure of public funds.
For this year, Strausburg said the finance department is working with the fire companies without audits to accept other financial reports.
For her part, Dawn Mitchell Parks, the county’s finance director, praised the response of the fire companies.
“Most of them have already turned in their information to us,” she said.
