A forensic audit is being launched now that “possible irregularities” have been uncovered in Ector County’s finances and auditor Randy Donner has resigned.
The law enforcement agency brought in to investigate will conduct a forensic audit and the county may also hire a forensic auditor, Ector County Judge Dustin Fawcett said Wednesday.
Donner’s resignation was announced Tuesday, but the details surrounding it remain unclear.
Fawcett simply announced “possible irregularities” had been found and turned over to the proper authorities.
Specifically, it’s unknown how much money is involved, when the irregularities began appearing or even how the irregularities were discovered.
“I can’t give out that information until the audit’s complete and we have a full picture. I don’t want to either minimize or maximize what we’ve found, and we want the professionals to handle exactly the dollar amount,” Fawcett said.
Donner was hired by the county in January 2006 and had been the auditor for four years.
“Personally, I’m thankful that we have found what we found and when we did find it. I want folks, the residents of Ector County, to know that we’re doing our best to understand the entirety of the situation,” Fawcett said. “We don’t want to talk about information until we have all of the information and that’s why we have gone out to the investigatory agency to figure out exactly what happened…if the information that we have is the totality of it or if it goes beyond what we have found.”
Ector County is audited annually by the outside firm of Whitley Penn and commissioners were supposed to approve a contract with the firm Tuesday to conduct the FY22-23 audit. That vote was tabled given the current situation.
The firm presented its audit of FY21-22 to the commissioners in March or April, Fawcett said.
“We’re combing through everything to get a good handle on the situation is the best way of explaining it. We have their contract, we’re looking at it,” Fawcett said. “There are certain things in there that are specific, that they did follow the government accounting standards, and I’m not for sure if the government accounting standards are something that could have caught this particular infraction, and that’s going to be up to the investigators and the forensic auditors to figure out. I’m not a CPA, and so I don’t know what they were or were not supposed to catch. They are known to do a good job, but we will see as more information comes out.”
Fawcett said Donner had a bond of $50,000 and the county’s insurance policy covers $500,000.
The county auditor typically helps the county judge prepare the county’s annual budget, but Fawcett sought to reassure county residents.
“We’ve got a great team here and that’s something that I would like to tell folks. We’ve been very methodical. We’ve got an amazing team that’s working on this,” Fawcett said. “All of the commissioners are all going to be heavily involved, perhaps more than they ever have been in the budget process. All of our department heads are ready to go into these one-on-one meetings and really bear down. It’s going to be a whole team effort. We have a great team at Ector County and the citizens should feel very confident that we’re gonna still continue business as usual.”
