During his report at Tuesday’s Knox City Council meeting, Clerk-Treasurer Jeff Houston discussed some internal controls training that’s required annually.
Houston explained, “This is where people working for the city are watching to make sure that there isn’t any kind of waste, fraud or abuse going on, that the accounting is being done correctly, that things aren’t being stolen or anything like that. The state has some training, it’s about 30 minutes, you watch a film.”
The clerk-treasurer said he provided all untrained employees with a handout that included information about how they could access the training video.
He said another part of the process is reviewing the city’s existing internal controls to ensure that duties are properly delegated so one single person isn’t responsible for important tasks.
Houston mentioned in addition to the required training video, state officials made a new recommendation this year.
“As far as any kind of updated training that the state suggested, there’s a movie on Netflix right now and it’s really interesting.” He went on to say, “It’s kind of a documentary and it’s called ‘All the Queen’s Horses’. It’s about the clerk-treasurer for Dixon, Illinois and in 20 years time, she managed to steal 56.7 million dollars.”
Clerk-Treasurer Houston said that state officials recommend watching the movie and then reflecting on what kind of internal controls could have been put in place to prevent such a thing from happening.
