Grant County has found itself in hot water after misspending nearly $75,000 on its Central Dispatch project.
The Indiana State Board of Accounts (SBOA) recently conducted an audit of the state’s E911 fee expenditures of various Public Service Answering Points (PSAPS) and found that 19 counties had misspent more than $94,000 on ineligible purchases.
Grant County Auditor Jim McWhirt confirmed that all $74,819.57 of misspent funds went towards the ongoing Central Dispatch project.
The SBOA audit listed Grant County’s expenditures under either building renovations or equipment. While certain maintenance and equipment expenses are permissible, there are some purchases that are considered ineligible under Indiana Code 36-8-16.7-38(a) and (b). An outline of permissible expenses is also available in the Statewide 911 Board’s Eligible/Ineligible Expense Guide for the 1222 Fund document.
According to this document, “maintenance includes repairs that do not add significant value to the property or extend its life. They are reasonable in amount and are necessary to keep the property in habitable condition. Repairs are generally considered restoring an item to its previous good condition. … Improvements or renovations, on the other hand, are ineligible expenses. A renovation will extend the useful life of the property. Improvements are generally considered adding something that was not previously there, upgrading something that was existing or adapting the asset to a new use. Improvements are usually more intensive than repairs and usually involve
greater cost.”
Examples of eligible maintenance expenses include repairing a roof, replacing rotted floorboards and repairing existing plumbing.
Examples of ineligible expenses include adding an addition or remodeling an existing facility, adding central air conditioning, replacing an entire roof and replacing all existing electric.
Currently, Grant County has until Sept. 1 to reimburse these funds.
McWhirt said Grant County Commissioner Mark Bardsley is trying to work with the state to determine if there is another way to resolve this issue, calling the matter a “disagreement” between the state and the county’s consultants on the project.
“In the opinion of our consultants, what we’ve done is acceptable, allowable. Right now there’s a ‘disagreement,’ I guess, based on the results of the audit,” McWhirt said. “I really don’t want us to, I guess, get too involved in a reaction to the audit yet because there are still some decisions to be made.”
As for the fact that Grant County was responsible for approximately 80 percent of the overall misuse found in the audit, McWhirt said he wasn’t sure any other county took on such a large-scale project at that time.
Bardsley did not return requests for comments by the time this story was published.
