The commonwealth’s attorney for Marshall and Calloway counties says he’s reviewing an audit report referred to him by the state auditor that found the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office not in compliance with state law.
The audit report from State Auditor Mike Harmon published last month found that the sheriff’s office did not obtain a revenue bond before the collection of 2019 property taxes.
“Since the revenue bond was not obtained, the amount of tax collections in the sheriff’s custody was at risk for potential loss and the sheriff was not in compliance with KRS 134.230,” a press release about the report states.
KRS 134.230(1)(a) states, in part: “The bond shall be executed prior to the sheriff collecting taxes for the year in which the bond is executed. The bond shall be approved by order of the governing body of the county, and shall be filed by the governing body of the county with the county clerk and with the department.”
42nd Circuit Commonwealth’s Attorney Dennis Foust said he is still reviewing the report’s findings but will most likely refer the report to the attorney general’s office. He said, according to his understanding, the sheriff posted a bond after being made aware of the issue, which was subsequently approved by the county fiscal court.
“Any kind of a bond is required in order to ensure if somebody did something that they weren’t supposed to do with money or something like that, you would have the bonding agency that would be on the hook so that the taxpayers wouldn’t lose anything,” Foust said.
Marshall County Sheriff Eddie McGuire said the audit finding was an “oversight” by his office and was immediately addressed when he was notified of the issue about three months ago.
“It’s my responsibility to make sure those things are in place, and we corrected it as soon as we found out,” McGuire said.
The audit report includes a response from the sheriff’s office, which states the sheriff did have a bond in place, but it wasn’t of sufficient value, according to the 2018 audit report of the sheriff’s office. The response also states that “[a]s soon as the Sheriff was made aware of this issue, a bond was obtained to meet statute.”
