A state audit of Isle of Wight County Treasurer Julie Slye’s 2023-24 accounting alleges she “did not comply with state laws and regulations.”

Slye said at least one of the findings identified in the audit was the result of her being told incorrect information by a state employee.

Isle of Wight’s Dec. 12 annual comprehensive financial report showed an “unmodified” or clean opinion from its auditing firm, Robinson Farmer Cox. However, its elected constitutional officers, who include the treasurer, sheriff and commissioner of revenue, undergo a separate audit process overseen by state Auditor of Public Accounts Staci Henshaw.

Henshaw’s report, dated Dec. 5, lists four findings.

The first alleges five out of 10 examined state income tax payments made by county residents to Slye’s office were not remitted to Richmond within one banking day of receipt as required by state law.

“None of the citizens were penalized for their estimated income tax filing being submitted to the state late,” Slye said. “Their vouchers were reported with the date we received the payment. The payment for the vouchers was sent at the end of the month. At the beginning of 2024 when speaking with a state employee on the phone I was told I only had to submit the vouchers and payments once a month. During the audit I learned that was not true; the vouchers and payments are to be submitted within one business day of receiving them.”

Slye said once she was informed of the error in processing, she “immediately changed” her “processing procedures to be following state laws and regulations.”

The second finding alleges Slye didn’t timely remit sheriff’s fees to Richmond. The report states that eight of 21 tested payments were delayed up to two months and that collections totaling $1,881 from April and May hadn’t been received by Richmond as of Dec. 5. State law requires fees to be remitted weekly or twice weekly when collections exceed $5,000. Slye said sheriff’s fees are services provided by the Sheriff’s Office to the courts or process fees the Sheriff’s Office collects. The fees referenced in the audit were paid in January and February 2024, Slye said.

“There were errors when creating the export file in the operating program which caused delays in the fees being reported,” Slye said. “I was able to work with a state employee over the phone in March of 2024 to get the reports to them.”

The third finding alleges Slye didn’t reconcile Isle of Wight’s internal financial system reports with Richmond’s.

“Proper monthly reconciliations are a significant internal control and are essential for determining the reliability of information,” Henshaw’s report states. “The Treasurer should reconcile assessments, collections, and uncollected balances per the locality’s financial system to the Commonwealth’s reports monthly.” This too is required under the Code of Virginia, the report states.

The fourth finding alleges Slye delayed recording three of five manual receipts tested by up to five days. The term refers to receipts that are handwritten rather than generated by a computer.

“Manual receipts are the vouchers citizens bring to the office, and we write a hand receipt for them,” Slye said. “The manual receipts are entered just like the vouchers we receive in the mail and submitted in the same manner.”

Henshaw’s report states her office discussed the four findings with Slye on Nov. 4. The report notes none of the four findings were previously included in the state’s 2022-23 audit of Isle of Wight’s constitutional officers, which indicates the findings have arisen only since Slye has been in office.

Voters elected Slye, a former deputy treasurer for Greensville County, in November 2023 over Dahlis Atkins, who at the time was interim treasurer and had been chief deputy treasurer under Slye’s predecessor, Judith Wells, until Wells’ retirement. Slye received 52.2% of the vote to Atkins’ 47.3%.

The reconciliation issue appears to have persisted since the state audit. In an email exchange the Times obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, County Finance Director Stephanie Wells tells Slye on Jan. 10 that “we have $5m in revenues going back to August that still need to be posted through Misc. Receipts” to “get the bank reconciliations completed.”

Members of a county-level audit committee formed last year in the wake of the prior-year school deficit blamed Slye at their Oct. 7 meeting for delays and errors that included Isle of Wight nearly defaulting on a bond payment in 2024. 

Stephanie Wells told the committee she’d emailed reminders to Slye more than once ahead of the deadline, and received no response. Wells ultimately made the payment herself. Slye told The Smithfield Times last fall that she’d only started taking over banking responsibilities from Wells’ department in September, and that the payment in question was due during the beginning of Slye’s office taking over these responsibilities.

Committee members at that meeting also blamed Slye for at least four county employees who were supposed to have been paid Sept. 13 not receiving their pay until three days later. That issue, according to email exchanges captured in the Times’ FOIA request, was persisting as recently as Dec. 30.

On Dec. 23, Wells copied Slye on an email to Bank of America representatives about “exceptions” resulting in county employees “having their pay checks rejected.” A same-day reply from Cyndi Wellman, an Isle of Wight systems analyst, recommended a change in the formatting Isle of Wight uses when sending its payroll files to the bank. A week later, Wells wrote in another email to Slye that “we are still having rejections/exceptions so it looks like we are still not changing the positive pay files before uploading.”