City Announces Clean Financial Audit

Feb 17, 2021 – At the Tuesday night (Feb 16) City Council Meeting, the State Auditor's Office (SAO) presented its annual report on the City's financial statements and book-keeping protocols. In a detailed process that takes many months, all local governments in Washington must be audited annually by the SAO.

The City received a clean audit for fiscal year 2019 and the final report will be posted on the State Auditor's website in approximately 7-14 days.

Last year, at the City’s request, the SAO identified a number of manual payroll-tracking practices that it believed were problematic because of the potential for errors and inconsistencies. Since that time, the City made this work a top priority and swiftly addressed these issues by revising and adopting payroll policies and procedures, separating leave accrual tracking and payroll processing, revising internal controls for payroll approval, and implementing a new software solution. Prior to last year’s findings, the City had received clean audits for 25 years.

“I know the whole Council appreciates receiving these reports each year from the SAO and we’re pleased to once again achieve a clean audit. Thank you to all the Finance Department and Human Resources staff that put in significant amounts of time during the pandemic to achieve this notable result,” said Mayor Benson Wong.

Next year, the implementation of new accounting standards, and an evaluation of the City’s CARES Act spending for COVID relief, is anticipated to require an expanded audit process.