ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
In 2023, the Seward County Treasurer’s office scored 98 percent on its audit by the Kansas Department of Revenue.
This year’s KDOR audit was recently completed, and though the score was slightly lower at 94 percent, Treasurer Mary Rose sees no cause for alarm.
Rose said KDOR officials audited a total of 781 transactions done by the local treasurer’s office between April 1 and May 10. The audit officially took place in September, and Rose said there were 19 problems found in the review.
“Most of our issues were on titling, replacing titles, and some of that has to do with people’s titles getting lost in the mail,” she said. “That hit us the hardest. That was the biggest. They found 10 of those.”
With these transactions, Rose said KDOR officials may tell local clerks to replace a title, and she said her workers got hit due to a lack of notes with some of these transactions.
“Other than that, we did really well on everything on title and registration, renewals,” she said. “All that came across great.”
After the September audit, Rose’s team met with KDOR officials in late October to review the results of the audit.
“In that conference, they go over everything, talk about what we did wrong, what we can do to improve and what the state expects,” she said. “It also educates the state on what we’re seeing in our area. Replacing titles was a hard hit. Our discussion with them the agents in Topeka are telling us to replace the title. If they told us to do it, why should we put the note in when they’re the ones who made the decision?”
Rose said the KDOR auditors would look at that situation, discuss it and figure out a solution. This was just one of the discussions her team had with the state workers.
“It’s a time for learning for both parties – the Kansas Department of Revenue and us,” she said. “With 98 percent and going to 94, I’m still happy because we’re still in the upper range. We’re not anywhere near an F. I’m happy with the 94 percent. We’ve also added a new person in the office. She’s only been with us a couple months. That was something we had to overcome. It was a learning experience for that person as well.”
Other problems, Rose said, included having wrong counties for a tag.
“That affects us, and the thing we have to do on that is we have to replace the tag again,” she said. “It’s not our fault we have to do that, but that is an issue.”
Not that the local treasurer’s office was anywhere near a failing grade, but Rose did explain what would likely happen should that be the case.
“They would send somebody down to say, ‘We need to regroup. We need to send you guys to training. We’re going to open up some Zoom trainings. We’re going to send somebody down,’ if that happened,” she said.
Rose said to her knowledge, none of the area treasurer’s offices have received failing grades on an audit, and she said while this would likely between a significant disconnect between local teams and KDOR, she said offices would not be fined or have items pulled from them.
“They’re just going to maybe put somebody on the ground to assist for a week or so to make sure we understand everything,” she said.
Rose said she still considers the 94 percent score for this year a great rate.
“We have overcome so much in our office in that whole year, and to have that still in the 90s range is kudos to the title clerks,” she said. “I’m not going to knock them. We were shooting for that extra 2 percent to get to 100 percent, and there’s only one county in the state of 105 counties that got 100 percent.”
Rose said that county does not do as many transactions as Seward County.
“We do 26,000 to 27,000 transactions a year in titles and registrations for KDOR for vehicles,” she said. “I’m not going to sit here and say it was bad. We did go down, absolutely. That did reflect that, but it’s nothing to frown about.”
Rose said she was caught somewhat off guard by the transaction errors found in the audit because she sees replacing titles as an easy step.
“I was trying to talk with KDOR and say, ‘Where’s that disconnect, and how are we getting hit so hard on those specific transactions?’” she said. “It didn’t make any sense to me. A replaced title is an easy task.”
In discussions with her team and reviewing audited transactions, Rose said the disconnnect and communication errors were soon found.
“We know our issue, and that was something, when we had the meeting on Oct. 23, we went over,” she said. “We discussed what they found. We know what we need to fix. We know what we need to change, and it was a learning experience for us to move forward.”
Overall, Rose said she is highly satisfied with this year’s audit.
“We found an issue, and the Kansas Department of Revenue is aware of that issue,” she said. “We both learned something. We both know what we need to work on in both ends to fix it.”
For this reason, Rose said the public should not be alarmed by any of the findings of the 2024 audit.
“It wasn’t anything that was going to affect them in their transactions or customer service or the ability or the capabilities of the title clerks,” she said. “Their knowledge and their abilities is top notch. I’m not sitting here saying it’s alarming. I’m satisfied with it. We are still in a good range.”
Treasurer’s office employees, Rose said, reviewed what KDOR found and what they need to look at fo improvement, and they know where work needs to be done.
“Let’s say we go in there, we see what they found, and we fix that,” she said. “Next year, we get hit for the plates because everybody’s getting new plates. We get hit harder because we’re replacing everybody’s plates, because they’re lost in the mail or in the wrong county. It’s just a learning experience and trying to maneuver through it and hopefully still come out on the top part of that grade.”
