Eye on Boise: Idaho treasurer’s office receives clean audit

The office of state Treasurer Ron Crane received a clean bill of health in a new management audit released late last week by Idaho’s state auditor’s office.

The new review, which covers fiscal years 2011 through 2013, is a turnaround from the previous three-year report, which highlighted three concerns that state auditors reported to the Idaho attorney general. They were related to gas card purchases, staff time and state funds supporting a program that wasn’t specifically authorized by the Legislature as well as travel costs for annual bond rating trips to New York, including the use of stretch limos to transport Idaho’s delegation there.

All three have been “satisfactorily closed,” the new audit reports.

Crane welcomed the audit and declared himself proud of his staff, which he said runs “a clean, efficient and smooth operation for the benefit of taxpayers in Idaho.”

“We strive to provide the best service possible through innovation and to protect the state’s assets by applying prudent and ethical banking and investment practices,” he said.

The gas card issue dealt with Crane charging nearly $8,000 on a state credit card for gas for his commutes from his Canyon County home to the Capitol. While auditors thought that violated the state’s travel policy, the attorney general later found that it didn’t. Nevertheless, Crane stopped charging the state for gas for his commute and now pays for his own.

The second finding involved the “Smart Money, Smart Women” conference that Crane’s office has been sponsoring annually around the state. The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee now authorizes $10,000 in annual expenditures specifically for that conference in Crane’s budget.

The third, dealing with the New York trips, prompted changes in how travel costs are accounted for in the annual bond rating trips to New York. Also, Crane said the Idaho delegation now is transported in SUVs rather than stretch limos.

The three-year review is required by state law; the state Audits Division, which falls under the Idaho Legislature, conducts the management reviews for all agencies.

The management reviews are separate from the statewide Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and Internal Controls Report, which is required under governmental accounting standards and examines financial details. That financial audit is the one that highlighted issues with Crane’s shifting of investments from one investment pool to another, which the audit said cost state taxpayers $10 million. A 90-day follow-up issued at the end of June said auditors still haven’t received documentation of a full review to show whether there were other such issues.

Crane’s Democratic challenger, Twin Falls CPA Deborah Silver, said she was glad to hear the management issues had been cleared up but remained concerned about the investment loss and continued to urge Crane to turn over documentation to state auditors.

School levies mount

More and more of Idaho’s school districts are seeking voter-approved local property tax increases – short-term supplemental levies that last one to two years – to cover basic expenses as state funding has fallen. Ninety-one of Idaho’s school districts now have such levies, up from 59 in 2006-07.

Now, Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News has crunched the numbers and reports that the voter-approved levies since July 1, 2007, have topped more than $1 billion.

The locally passed supplemental levies replaced only a fraction of the money cut from state funding for schools, Richert reported.

PERSI fund healthy

Even after the board of the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho voted last week to give state and local government retirees their first cost-of-living increase in six years and cancel two long-delayed contribution rate increases, the PERSI fund remains one of the healthiest in the nation.

It was the ninth-best funded in 2013, and has improved since then. PERSI’s funded status, after the increases, is 92.3 percent. Public pension systems are considered healthy when they’re funded at 80 percent or better.

Soaring investment earnings prompted the board to approve up to 4 percent in cost-of-living increases for PERSI retirees, depending on when they retired. That will make up a small part of what the retirees missed over the past six years when they received only legally required 1 percent annual increases, even when the consumer price index showed higher bumps in the cost of living.

PERSI fund assets reached an all-time high of nearly $15 billion at the close of the fiscal year June 30.