Greensboro News & Record

 

July 6, 2005

 

State faults college's finances for 2nd year
 

By Taft Wireback, Staff Writer
The News & Record

Randolph Community College continued to have trouble last year with record keeping and student grants because of "significant deficiencies" in its financial controls and other factors, the Office of State Auditor said in its annual review of the school.

Auditors also said that in the financial year ending in June 2004, they found mistakes in the federal Pell Grant program that awards money to needy students.

It was the second annual audit in a row to raise questions about some of the school's financial practices and its Pell Grant policies.

Part of the problem might be that, by the time last year's critical audit was unveiled and action was taken to fix problems, months of errors already had accumulated under financial practices that have now been reformed, said Dennis Patterson, a spokesman for State Auditor Les Merritt.

"A lot of these issues are complicated," Patterson said of the financial issues the school is confronting. "They are issues that must be addressed at the root cause."

The report also faulted the college for defective banking and accounting practices. "The audit trail for many accounts reviewed by auditors was unclear and difficult to follow," it said.

However, Patterson said this year's audit findings were more favorable than those in last year's stinging report.

He said some of the problems in the 2003-2004 audit also might have stemmed from high turnover in the college's financial offices.

"They are definitely showing improvement and, of course, that's what is important to our folks," Patterson said.

College officials accept the auditors' findings as accurate and have put policies into effect to correct them, said Joseph Snell, vice president for administrative services.

"We have corrected everything it is possible to correct," Snell said of the school's immediate response to the audit. He said other initiatives are moving ahead to address the rest of the audit report.

Snell said that in recent months, the college has hired two retired financial-aid directors from other community colleges to work with the Randolph school's staff: Linda Estes, formerly of Rockingham Community College; and Carolyn Braxton, formerly of Wake Technical Community College.

The state's auditing program examines the condition of each of the state's 58 community colleges every year, taking an in-depth look at the finances of the previous fiscal year.

In state government, the fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

The new report looks at the period from July 2003 through June of last year. The same auditing team also examined the school in the 2002-03 fiscal year, Patterson said.

The auditing team cited basic bookkeeping issues. For example, "an incorrect entry was posted for a Pell (Grant) over-award estimate that caused expenses and revenues to be overstated by $280,448.84 on the college's financial statements."

Snell said the error was an accounting issue only and did not cost the college any money.

Just like the previous year's examination, the most recent audit sampled the records of 39 recipients of Pell Grants selected at random.

This year's sampling found errors in Pell Grants to three students, who were awarded a total of $2,093 too little in educational assistance. Last year, auditors found four students in the random sampling were awarded $2,312 too much