Retirement plan audits to cost $42K

Sat in the pension board meeting Monday for more than two hours. Exciting stuff, I'll tell ya. No, really. Good stuff. Heh.

Anyhoo, I've got a notebook full of information, most of it will never see print because we don't have the space, so I'll start dumping some of it here on the ole blog.

The County Commission recently (it might have been Monday when I was sleeping) signed a four-year contract with Pugh and Company, which will serve as its external auditor. The Knoxville-based company also will work with the pension board.

Some officials, particularly Knox County Senior Director of Finance John “Mad Dog” Troyer, have been itching to get someone to audit the county's six retirement programs.

Now, don't go and get too excited. For someone who operates with the glass half full, even I seriously doubt they're going to find anything. (Other than investment returns kind of suck. But that's true pretty much everywhere.)

In fact, Troyer called it a “straight forward vanilla” audit. (Although he might have said a “Donila” audit.)

The IRS looked over some of the plans (if not all of them) not to long ago and didn't find anything. (As I recall there were some payroll issues or something to do with the county not putting in interest or whatnot, but the plans were pretty much clean.)

The pension board will pick up the tab – about $42,000 for the first year's audit. Executive Director Kim Bennett said the scratch will come from a pot of coins set aside to purchase new software.(She hinted pretty hard Monday to the board that if she uses this money for the audit, she'd still need the software in 2013. In other words, fellas, don't be surprised if I put some extra coinage in there 18 months from now!)

ON A SIDE NOTE: Ann Acuff, who is pretty much second-in-command of the county's finance office is (or has) retired. I met her a few times and she has always been very pleasant and very helpful. Her effective retirement date is Dec. 1. She's leaving after more than 46 years.

That's pretty cool. So congrats goes out to her.