County Clerk Transition 2021

Published July 30, 2021

The audit was performed as to review the County Clerk’s transition. The County Clerk position is in transition on the July 2021 retirement of the County’s County Clerk, Nancy Blankenship. Internal audits are performed when elected positions transition.

What was found:

Key responsibilities of the County Clerk include elections, recording, and safe keeping of County records. The Board of County Commissioners have appointed Steve Dennison as Interim County Clerk.

The County does not require transition plans for department heads or elected officials. However, a transition plan can provide an important path to picking up where one person leaves off and another starts. Certain inquiries were made of the operations to assure a smooth transition.

Overall, the Clerk’s Office performed well in providing fiscal controls. Additional areas noted for improvement, including:

• Some contracts and contract renewals needed;
• Facility access permissions to Clerk’s Office should be monitored;
• Security consultation recommendations still need action;
• Control over shared use of procurement card could be strengthened; and
• Audit trail for receipts in recording software could be improved.

County code (8.35.070) currently authorizes and directs the County Clerk to provide noxious weed information to persons having certain machinery. The County Clerk is not involved with this as it is a Road Department program.

What was recommended:

Recommendations included:

• documenting transitional information;
• developing contracts and contract renewals with significant vendors;
• addressing access to Clerk’s Office;
• addressing recommendations from the Office of Homeland Security;
• using a log to track procurement card use;
• improving the audit trail for recording; and
• amending County code 8.35.070(D) to direct the notification responsibilities to a more appropriate party than the County Clerk.

Recommendation update:

At the 2025 Global update, the Clerk had improved Office security measures, but still had not improved contract monitoring.