Houston County Receives Clean Bill of Financial Health
By Will Johnson
Messenger Reporter
EAST TEXAS – The finances of Houston County received a clean bill of health during a called meeting of the Commissioners Court held on Wednesday morning, June 30.
The mid-week meeting was convened at 9 am and with only one actionable item on the agenda, the court quickly got down to business.
Kim Johnson, a partner in the accounting firm of Todd, Hamaker and Johnson, joined the meeting via Zoom and walked the commissioners through the findings of the Fiscal Year 2020 Houston County audit report.
After Johnson thanked the county and county officials for their help in preparing the audit, Johnson began her report.
“I am reporting this morning on the financial statements for the year ending Sept. 30, 2020. We will go over this report briefly,” she said.
The first place she referred the commissioners to was the firm’s opinion letter.
“Once we actually complete the audit, we are able to give an opinion on the financial statements. This letter which s a couple of pages long outlines the various parts of the report,” Johnson explained.
She went on to say that one of the things where an opinion was expressed was in the first paragraph on page seven of the report.
“These are all the basic financial statements for the county. This includes all of the governmental funds, each of the major funds and all of the aggregate fund information for the county. We outline our responsibilities and your responsibilities in terms of the financial statements. Our responsibility is to obtain evidence which allows us to form an opinion. We were able to form an opinion on the financial statements and we able to obtain enough evidence to form the basis of our opinion. Accordingly, we are giving an unmodified, clean opinion which says the financial statements presented referred to above present fairly in all material aspects of the financial positions of the governmental activity in each major fund and the aggregate remaining fund, as well as the respective changes in the year ending Sept. 30, 2020,” she said.
An unmodified opinion is the highest rating available to an audit.
Will Johnson may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].
