Miscalculation results in $156K going to wrong places in Cape County

A miscalculation by the Cape Girardeau County collector led to a combined $156,000 error in tax distributions, making the city of Jackson cash richer than expected and leaving several other entities in the county shortchanged.

The error, caught by outside auditors, has been corrected, the money returned and the right amounts disbursed -- including some $59,000 to the Cape Girardeau School District.

Collector Diane Diebold apologized in her letter to the county commission, which Thursday noted the matter, marked on the agenda under routine business as "Letter re: state reimbursement of assessment expenses for FY 2012."

"During our current audit it has been discovered that I made a mistake on the calculations of the percentage of tax each authority would receive of the surtax," Diebold, wrote to the Jackson city clerk in a letter dated May 17. "Because of my error we have disbursed too much money to the city of Jackson.

"I am truly sorry for the error."

The city of Jackson incorrectly received $201,267.94, $154,739.15 more than it was entitled to under the formula. Diebold requested the city to refund the overage, so that it can be disbursed to all of the taxing authorities "that we shortchanged," according to the letter.

"It's my fault. I put a wrong number in a wrong field and it calculated everything wrong," Diebold told the Southeast Missourian on Friday.

The county treasurer also needed $2,025.35 refunded on Chapter 100 priorities, funds disbursed on the wrong percentages.

"I hope this has not caused too much of a problem for the city," Diebold wrote.

Outside auditors looking over the county's books noticed the discrepancy on the distributions, sent out in March.

Cape Girardeau County Auditor Pete Frazier said it was a simple human error that was found "rather quickly."

"It was something to explore a little deeper," he said. "We contacted the collector's office and backtracked where the error occurred."

The money has been remitted to its proper taxing entities, according to collection officials.

The Cape Girardeau School District, at least for a time, took the biggest revenue hit, shortchanged $59,327.37 in the mix-up. A district finance official did not return a phone call Friday.

The Jackson School District received $42,896.61 less in the tax disbursement category.

"To say it doesn't have an impact, that would be incorrect," said Wade Bartels, the district's chief financial officer. "But it's nothing major."

Officials with taxing entities contacted by the Southeast Missourian shrugged off the error, saying the shortfall has been remedied.

"I wasn't aware of the problem," Cape Girardeau city manager Scott Meyer said. "I don't know if it's causing us any real budget problems at this time, but I'm confident the county will take care of it."

The $23,590.14 the city was originally shortchanged amounts to about 0.05 percent of the city's total operating budget of about $46.3 million.

Some smaller taxing entities initially lost just a bit more than the cost of a McDonald's value meal in the miscalculation; Oak Ridge, for instance, received $6.61 less than what it was owed. Gordonville had an additional $23.53 coming to it.

Jackson assistant city administrator Larry Koenig said the collection error caused "absolutely no problems" with the city's books.

"They just overpaid. We still got the correct amount somewhere down the line," he said. "It was a little bookkeeping error."

Koenig said the mistake would have been caught by Jackson officials eventually.

County officials say such accounting miscalculations are rare.

Diebold said such mistakes can happen, that it's a data entry matter without a "whole lot of checks and balances."

Commissioner Jay Purcell said the error involved a sizable amount of money and that there should be procedural checks and balances to make sure such mistakes don't happen again.

"That's real money to all of these entities," he said.

Purcell said he would have preferred the error hadn't been noted under routine business in the commission's nonagenda portion of the meeting, where seven items -- including a commendation -- came up with little discussion, and none devoted to Diebold's letter.

"It was sent through as a pass-through," Purcell said. "The main thing is that Diane came out in the open in a public way and said she made a mistake and apologized for it."

mkittle@semissourian.com

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