2025-049 Mendocino County

Audit Recommendations Disclosure

When an audit is completed and a report is issued, auditees must provide the State Auditor with information regarding their progress in implementing recommendations from our reports at three intervals from the release of the report: 60 days, six months, and one year. Additionally, Senate Bill 1452 (Chapter 452, Statutes of 2006), requires auditees who have not implemented recommendations after one year, to report to us and to the Legislature why they have not implemented them or to state when they intend to implement them. Below is a listing of each recommendation the State Auditor made in the report referenced and a link to the most recent response from the auditee addressing their progress in implementing the recommendation and the State Auditor’s assessment of auditee’s response based on our review of the supporting documentation.

Recommendation 7

To enhance its safeguards against waste, fraud, and abuse, the county should, by June 2026, amend its purchasing policies to include clearer requirements for the documentation that departments must maintain to support their purchases. These new requirements should include an expectation that departments maintain a receipt or invoice record of what they purchased, they should document the reasons for the purchase, and they should reconcile payments for travel that they made in advance of the trip.

To ensure that it uses asset forfeiture funds only for allowable purposes and to provide transparency and promote accountability for that use, the county should adopt a county policy by June 2026 that does the following:

• Describes the appropriate and inappropriate uses of asset forfeiture funding. The policy should specifically address whether the county allows donations of these funds to private entities, and if it does allow such donations, it should include the ways in which the county will ensure that it protects against political or personal interests influencing such donations.
• Requires that all applicable offices and departments include asset forfeiture funds in the county’s annual budget with a clear description of their intended use.
• Mandates that all offices and departments that receive and use asset forfeiture funding produce an annual report that identifies how they used such funds. The county should make this report available to the public and discuss it at a public board meeting.
• Directs the ACTTC to regularly perform audits of the use of asset forfeiture funds at a prescribed interval, with no more than three years passing between audits.

To ensure that it closely adheres to advisable contracting practices, the county should, by June 2026, consider sources of best practices, such as the DGS procurement checklist, and revise its contracting and purchasing policies to align with such practices as applicable.

Recommendation 10

To ensure that departments justify all sole-source agreements, the county should, by June 2026, develop a sole-source justification expectations document and distribute it to departments. The expectations document should refer to county policy on sole-source procurement and provide examples and explanations of adequate and inadequate justifications.

To ensure that departments properly advertise all contracts for bid and submit those contracts for board consideration, the county should, by March 2026, begin tracking when a department enters into successive contracts with the same vendor for the same services and take action to address such situations with the responsible departments.

Recommendation 14

To maximize the county’s accounting system’s capabilities and to ensure consistent documentation of the work its staff perform, the CEO’s Office and the ACTTC’s Office should, by September 2026, collaboratively develop a plan for using more of the system’s capabilities. At a minimum, the plan should address electronic processing of journal entries and bank reconciliations. It should also include goals for how the county will use the system, assign responsibility to specific staff for managing the county’s efforts to reach those goals, and create deadlines for achieving the goals.

Recommendation 16

To ensure that the ACTTC’s Office receives necessary information from departments in a timely manner, the CEO’s Office and the ACTTC’s Office should, by June 2026, collaborate on a protocol that outlines the key expectations for the timeliness and content of these communications. These offices should meet monthly to coordinate and share information about requests that have gone unfulfilled and to identify successful approaches to sharing information that they can replicate.

Recommendations to Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder-Elections Office

Recommendation 18

To safeguard the county against poor performance by elections-related vendors, the Elections Office should, as soon as possible, secure a contract agreement with its ballot printing vendor that specifies the compensation the vendor will receive and how the county will address poor contractor performance.

Recommendation 19

To provide assurance that it has placed all voters in the correct precinct, the Elections Office should review all voter precinct assignments and verify that they are correct before the next county election. The Elections Office should prioritize reviewing the placement of voters who live in areas of the county that may be at higher risk of misplacement, such as areas where voting district boundaries have changed recently. When it completes this review, the Elections Office should report the results to the board and identify the potential impact on any previous elections.

Recommendation 20

To ensure that it assigns voters to the correct precincts when voting district boundaries change, the Elections Office should, by June 2026, create procedures for responding to district boundary changes. These procedures should include using automated assistance from GIS or similar automated approaches to making assignments. They should also identify the steps that Elections Office staff will take to review a sample of assignments from high-risk areas to determine whether voters’ placements are correct.

Recommendations to Mendocino County Auditor-Controller Treasurer-Tax Collectors Office

Recommendation 12

To ensure the consistency and efficiency of its operations, the ACTTC’s Office should revise its timeline for creating policies and procedures for key responsibilities, including bank reconciliations and journal entries, by March 2026. It should then follow this timeline.

Recommendation 13

To maximize the county’s accounting system’s capabilities and to ensure consistent documentation of the work its staff perform, the CEO’s Office and the ACTTC’s Office should, by September 2026, collaboratively develop a plan for using more of the system’s capabilities. At a minimum, the plan should address electronic processing of journal entries and bank reconciliations. It should also include goals for how the county will use the system, assign responsibility to specific staff for managing the county’s efforts to reach those goals, and create deadlines for achieving the goals.

To ensure that the ACTTC’s Office receives necessary information from departments in a timely manner, the CEO’s Office and the ACTTC’s Office should, by June 2026, collaborate on a protocol that outlines the key expectations for the timeliness and content of these communications. These offices should meet monthly to coordinate and share information about requests that have gone unfulfilled and to identify successful approaches to sharing information that they can replicate.

Recommendation 17

To ensure that the county is fully prepared to address future changes resulting from new accounting standards, the ACTTC’s Office should, by June 2026, establish a plan for how it will approach these changes. At a minimum, the plan should designate which staff in the ACTTC’s Office are responsible for monitoring changes in relevant standards and specify how the office will communicate with other county departments about their responsibilities for gathering, analyzing, and providing required information.

Recommendation to Mendocino County Board of Supervisors

Recommendation to the Legislature

Recommendation 6

If the Legislature wishes to restrict to certain purposes local governments’ use of asset forfeiture funds, it should amend the Substances Act to specify those purposes. For example, the Legislature could restrict the use of these funds to only law enforcement purposes.