-David Crowder, WRGA News-
Will Derzis with Mauldin & Jenkins presented the audit results during Monday’s Rome City Commission meeting.
The City of Rome gets a clean audit review for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025.
On Monday, Will Derzis with Mauldin & Jenkins presented the audit results.
“The goal is to obtain reasonable rather than absolute assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free of material misstatement,” he said. “I’m pleased to share that we did issue an unmodified opinion, which you can think of as a clean report.”
The financial statements are audited in accordance with government auditing standards in the U.S. as well as generally accepted auditing standards.
“There were some recommendations that we encountered that are just management recommendations for improvement,” Derzis added. “One being a special revenue fund- the city’s hotel-motel fund, in which the final adopted budget budgeted to exceed more savings and more fund balance than the fund had to offer. The result was a budget deficit, which the state considers to be a matter of non-compliance. Fortunately for the city, that amount is not a material amount relative to the opinion or relative to the hotel-motel fund, but therefore we have provided that as written recommendation.”
The financial statements themselves are the responsibility of the city.
City Commissioner Mark Cochran has a number of questions for Derzis regarding compliance as it relates to the legal level of control regarding the reassignment of resources and budget amendments.
Swanson files ethics complaint against city commissioner
Also on Monday, during public participation, Mark Swanson addressed the commission and said that he has filed an ethics complaint against Commissioner Wayne Robinson.
Swanson stated that the complaint involves an offer to purchase the Bill Collins Village from the Housing Authority of Northwest Georgia.
The city will now appoint an outside attorney to review the complaint and determine if further action is warranted.
