Kendra Leatherman, pictured at right, general counsel for the State Board of Accounts, speaks before the Legislative Council Audit and Financial Reporting Subcommittee Tuesday at the Statehouse.
By Ashlyn Myers, TheStatehouseFile.com
Though Indiana’s legislative session doesn’t begin until January each year, a group of appointed lawmakers steps into the Statehouse during the summer and fall months to discuss topics approved by the bipartisan Legislative Council, comprised of 16 voting members: eight from the Senate and eight from the House of Representatives.
The council’s Audit and Financial Reporting Subcommittee is tasked with assuring the independence of the State Board of Accounts, overseeing the SBOA’s annual report as well as its state and local audits. The General Assembly created the SBOA in 1909, and “for more than 100 years, [it] has been holding government officials accountable to their constituents for financial reporting and following the Indiana Code when making any type of decision that relates to taxpayer dollars,” according to the SBOA webpage.
“A government that values ethics and integrity must have and support a strong and independent agency such as the Board of Accounts as part of its system of checks and balances.”
So on Tuesday, the subcommittee met to do just that. Kendra Leatherman, general counsel for the State Board of Accounts, stood before the legislators to give updates on recent audits as well as share some internal concerns within the SBOA.
The SBOA is responsible for auditing all Indiana units of government, from school boards to libraries, and naturally this takes significant manpower—a growing issue, according to Leatherman, with which the SBOA has been wrestling.
Leatherman said her organization has seen a 30% increase in audit workload due to COVID-19 and increased federal dollars.
“We’re really proud about the amount of work that we’ve been able to get done in a fiscal year and really proud that we’ve been able to otherwise absorb that extra increase with our staff that we have,” Leatherman said. “But it is still the case that we’re still feeling the effects of auditing all those federal dollars.”
Leatherman said that while the SBOA has been able to hire 37 new employees, the organization lost 22 due to retirement and resignation.
To stay competitive in the accounting field, the organization proposed increase its starting salary from $53,000 a year to $56,000—which is still $10,000-$15,000 lower than what private auditing firms are offering starting employees, Leatherman added.
Beyond pay concerns, Leatherman said some of their field examiners are having to travel significant distances to audit units of government in less-populated areas.
“At the moment, we don’t actually have a lot of field examiners that live in Vigo County. We have some, but because … we don’t have too many that live in Lafayette, my field examiners that live in Terre Haute might be driving all the way up to Benton County to do an audit,” Leatherman said.
“It’s really easier for us to hire where there is more population because there’s a larger pools of candidates to pick from. But if we don’t do that, what happens is, people end up driving a lot farther and then that increases our costs.”
Leatherman also explained that the accounting field is experiencing a general shortage in graduates. A survey from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) found that bachelor’s degree completions dropped 7.8% between the academic years of 2021 and 2022.
Though legislators stressed that their subcommittee isn’t authorized to allocate additional state dollars to the organization, they encouraged the SBOA to meet with the State Budget Agency to move forward with their proposed increase as long as it fell within their current budget.
Interim committees will continue to meet ahead of the 2025 legislative session. Find the full schedule of upcoming meetings here.
Ashlyn Myers is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
