STERLINGTON, La (KTVE/KARD) — The town of Sterlington is in a time crunch to complete missing audit reports not done under the former administration. The reports have not been submitted for the last 5 years, dating back to 2018.
Matt Talbert, mayor of Sterlington, explains further details. “We’ve been working with our state legislature trying to get funding here for Sterlington, and one of the things holding us back is the audits being so far behind. So we went down about a little over two weeks ago with Michael Echols and visited with the state legislative auditor, Mike Waguespack, and his recommendation was to get us in front of the legislative audit advisory committee with our auditor. So we went down this past Monday and visited with them.”
Talbert explains that they can get off the non-compliance list by submitting all the audits in six months. “Essentially, we can still apply for funding through the state, but they just wouldn’t release the funds until we were off the non-compliance list. So we went down, met with a committee, and they asked us if we could do the other four years in six months. We said we could do it. The auditor stepped up and said he could do it. So they took us off the non-compliance list until March 31, 2024, and at that time, they’ll revisit it. My hope is that those audits are in and complete, and we’re back right on track.”
Talbert explains that to be granted the six months, they have to have the first audit from 2018 submitted by October 12th. “I’ve already answered the audit findings and sent them back to the auditor. I spoke with him again today; he’ll have it in today, so it’ll be a day early. We really believe we can get this done in six months.”
The town has already started pulling records for the other missing years so they can start working on the audits.
