With new leadership in place, Chatham County Recorder’s Court officials are taking steps to improve internal controls and procedures almost three years after auditors found citations and outstanding fines were not being properly monitored.
The issues cited in the 2010 audit included a flawed computer system that sometimes skipped blocks of receipt numbers, making it more difficult to verify the settlement of cases and payment of fines.
Court officials were also not keeping track of how much in fines were owed. After performing their own review, auditors found from 2006 through July 2010 there was a shortfall of about $3.5 million in traffic fine payments.
A couple of additional checks from prior years revealed almost $256,000 in outstanding fines from the year 2000 and another $417,000 from 1995.
Tammy Stokes, who had recently been sworn in as chief judge, requested last June that the county retain TATC Consulting. The county had a contract with the firm stemming to 2008 to evaluate the efficiency of various county departments on an as-needed basis.
County Manager Russ Abolt said the consultant contract was approved to provide an impartial resource the county could call upon when necessary.
In a memo to Abolt dated June 14, Stokes said she was requesting the assistance after concluding there was no written procedure for writing citations and no self-auditing system to ensure correctness. Stokes asked that TATC document the citation process to help improve use of staff, work flow and accuracy.
The management firm submitted a draft report last month after county commissioners approved the review in November at a cost of $19,500, plus travel expenses. Sixty-eight percent of the cost is to be paid by the city of Savannah.
The firm recommended the court convert from a manual to an automated system using technology that is already in place, that online payments be more actively promoted and that a system for reporting owed fines be developed.
In addition, the consultant recommended more aggressive strategies for reducing the amount of outstanding fines such as the booting of vehicles and the use of a collection agency.
Ken Murray, who conducted the study for TATC, declined to comment.
Stokes said Wednesday the court is in the process of reviewing and implementing recommendations. A contract to hire a collection agency is expected to be considered by the Savannah City Council this month, Stokes said.
The firm also presented a plan for streamlining the citation process from the point of issuance to a court resolution in order to eliminate duplication and cut costs — a plan that would reduce the number of work steps by more than half.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” Stokes said. “It confirmed what we thought.”