During Tuesday night’s special meeting of the Nome Joint Utility Board (NJUS), independent auditor Joy Merriner found no issues with NJUS’s 2015 governmental audit.
No material weakness, significant deficiency, or noncompliance material has been identified or reported per governmental auditing standards, thus prompting the “no findings” status of the report.
Merriner presented the parameters as listed under two categories: internal control and compliance. She described some of the governmental audits that require close attention to their compliance with federal regulations: “so for example, your nine-forty-ones, are they being filed timely, do they file out to your financial information, are you reporting your wages correcting on them? And also, compliance with your union contracts when we do our payroll testing. Some of those kinds of things we look at a little more closely with a government auditing standards audit.”
Additionally, Merriner reported an improvement in NJUS’s bottom line (or ending profit for the year), while stressing importance of positive cash flow from an operational standpoint. Merriner stated, “you should be cash positive from operations because you have to pay for debt… cash flow from operations is positive this year, a little bit more positive than last year [2014], and that’s great.”
Though the presentation of the 2015 financial report was delayed by late-coming pension liability information from the state of Alaska and other parties not including NJUS, the yearly governmental audit should proceed as scheduled for 2016.
NJUS will meet again for a regular meeting at 7:30pm on December 20th.
