ROBERT PIERCE

   • Leader & Times

Every year, the Kansas Department of Revenue audits a number of motor vehicle transactions in treasurers departments across the state.

“They come in at a percentage to see how we’re doing in the office,” Seward County Treasurer Mary Rose said. “We never know when those audits are going to happen. They just come and do them, and then they say, ‘We’re going to set up a meeting with you to talk about it.’”

In 2024, Rose’s department scored a 98 percent. In 2025, that score dropped to 94 percent, and for this year, the score was 93 percent.

Though the score has decreased since she came on as treasurer in 2023, Rose assured constituents there is no cause for alarm, as she knows part of the reason this year’s score was lower.

“I feel we probably would’ve stayed the same this year, but they increased this year how many they’re going to audit,” she said. “Last year, they did 132, and this year, they increased the amount to more. Because of that, we got a 93 percent.”

Rose said the findings in this year’s audit were very minor and quite fixable, and she therefore believes there is little, if anything, for anyone to worry about with the audit.

“It was some scanning errors that happened,” she said. “That’s pretty remarkable for the girls. They did 134 findings. Normally, whenever you have a lot of findings, it’s because you’ve had a change in employment. We do have a new person on the front line. She’s been here for almost a year, and those findings, 99 percent of the time, are on that person because they are still learning the job.”

Rose said she and her workers are not perfect, and she always expects KDOR to find something.

“If we were perfect, that’s wonderful, but I would want to us to at least have a training experience to say we found something and this is the issue,” she said. “They did find some stuff like they do every year, but they weren’t saying it was critical or anybody should be worried about it. It was just little tasks.”

Rose said the audit is done to make sure her department is in compliance with state statutes and confidentiality, as well as documents.

“It’s a little different, but they handle all of their stuff,” she said. “Their financing part of it or the money part of their side, they audit they entire side because we do collect money from them, and we haven’t had anything come back saying we’re incompliant or had any findings in any of that.”

With office workers constantly busy with their jobs, Rose said mistakes can be easily made.

“The girls might say they’re going to scan it,” she said. “Their scanners down, and they forget to scan the document in”

However, Rose said errors are quickly found and corrected, and this is noted in the KDOR audit.

“The state said the marks we got were extremely high,” she said. “They are always proud of us. We are always at a high percentage, and they contribute that to the longevity and the tenure in the office.”

Rose said other mistakes come with formed with signing and dating forms.

“Somebody came in, and they might’ve signed a form,” she said. “They put their name at the bottom, but they didn’t put the date at the bottom of the form. The date might be on the transaction.”

Rose said these and other errors are minute at worst.

“Even though the date is on transaction and maybe on other paperwork, they want the date on there,” she said. “Some of the other stuff was scanned later. They would mark it as scan later and put in there. Some were just missing notes. All the information was there, but they wanted us to put the notes in there. Some of that is by user. It’s not that it’s required, but we want you to do that. The signature’s there. The date of the transaction’s there. The person signed off on the transaction, but there’s a date missing on something. We just have to fix the little things. It’s nothing I’m worried about. The state’s not worried about it.”

On average, Rose’s office does 26,000 transactions every year, and she said both the amount of audited transactions and the mistakes found in them were quite small and mostly due to a new worker in the office.

“It’s a learning curve and learning stuff,” she said. “We all get in a hurry. I’m not concerned about it. The public shouldn’t be concerned about it.”

Though this year’s score decreased slightly, Rose said 93 percent is still exceptional, as is any score 90 percent or higher.

“I feel we would’ve stayed at the 94 if they would’ve audited the same amount this year they audited last year,” she said. “They did increase that, and they said moving foward, we should be seeing about the same amount of audits pulled every year. Hopefully, we can move up from that 93 since they’re not going to move that audit number.”

High audit scores, Rose said, are due to the many years of experience amongst her workers.

“They have a great work ethic,” she said. “They work good together. They work good for the community.”

Rose said she was somewhat stunned by the increased number of audited transactions, and she wished she had been notified prior to the visit from KDOR.

“I always want to make us top notch,” she said. “I always want us to have a goal to be better. Unfortunately, the fact they audited more because they changed their structure, I wish they would’ve told us beforehand that happened.”

Despite this, Rose said she is extremely proud of the workers in her office and the hard work they do to follow state laws.

“If they don’t know, they get on the phone with the Kansas Department of Revenue, ask questions,” she said. “We try to keep the confidentiality, the integrity up in the office. I don’t see us going anymore than forward from this.”

As for what it takes to accomplish scores like the ones seen in her office the past three years, Rose said there are many qualities such as leadership and pride in the job and the office, as well as having the tools available to do so.

“If they don’t know, they’ll ask another person, having that comradery together that they have,” she said. “If your employees aren’t happy, their output and everything else shows that. These girls are happy. We can see that because they’ve been here for many years, and they know the laws. They know what they’re doing.”

Rose said she commends her staff for their hard work.

“We always look forward to the audit because we always want to be higher,” she said. “The past couple years, we’ve gone down one notch, but it’s nothing to fret about.”

Rose also praised those in her office for being exceptionally organized.

“We do nothing but follow the law, protect our taxpayers and make sure our citizens know not to expect anything less from us,” she said. “We keep ourselves at higher standards. As far as the county as a whole, I see us as the face of the county because we see all of your wonderful faces as every time you come in here at least two times a year. We’re going to keep trucking along no matter what happens and make sure we keep the integrity and the good grace and let the community know we’re here working for them.”

Though changes are being seen frequently in the county’s overall budget, Rose said the budget in her office looks to stay the same for the upcoming fiscal year.

“We will have to do some restructuring, but as far as the budget to the taxpayer, our side is pretty much the same,” she said. “Nothing’s changed in our office. We do have some obstacles to overcome, which will be through restructuring of the payroll scale, but it is what it is. Luckily, the Kansas Department of Revenue’s able to help me with that.”

Rose said she is extremely proud of the high scores from recent audits, and she thinks, feels and believes the treasurer’s office did good on the most recent audit.

“Even though there’s 105 counties, some counties have more than one office they have to work out of, and for our office to come in at 93 percent is something remarkable,” she said. “Above 90 percent is awesome. I’m always very proud of the girls. We’ll be celebrating a little bit. I’ll be treating them to dinner or lunch or a sweet treat for a job well done.”