CASE 1:
In May of this year, one of the county’s commissioners conducted a review of the financial records of Fannin County and compared what he learned to the monthly
county investment report. The commissioner discovered that over eleven (11) million dollars was not being reported in the investment report. This money was being reported by the county auditor’s office as cash-on-hand. The reason this matters is that this money was located in a checking account at a local bank drawing minimal interest ($524 for the month of April). Working with the auditor and treasurer, the commissioner determined that most of this money could be moved to a TexPool account that currently earns more than 5% interest annually. The significance of this finding is that the money could be earning over $40,000 per month in interest. This equates to approximately one-half million dollars per year. Considering that interest rates have been high during
the past two years, the county lost an opportunity to earn approximately one million additional dollars. Most of the money was quickly moved to a TexPool account to take
advantage of the higher interest rate. Moving the money to a TexPool account has little affect on how quickly it can be accessed if, and when, it is needed for county expenses. For the sake of transparency, the TexPool account is not FDIC-insured. However, there is little, if any, concern about the solvency of TexPool. Another benefit derived from the actions described above is that the funds that were left in the local bank will earn 4%annual interest. This benefit resulted from discussions with the local bank.
CASE 2:
In August of this year, the same commissioner discovered that the formula used by the Appraisal District to compute tax revenue for the county contained a mistake when the estimated sales tax for fiscal year 2024 was entered incorrectly. When the sales tax entry was corrected, the county will receive more than $500,000 in additional revenue. The takeaway from these two cases is that we need diligent and capable individuals managing Fannin County business.
