Auditor recommends hot line to fight fraud

The outside auditor for the Oconee public schools recommends the county district create a telephone hot line to allow persons to report fraud. Don Estep made that recommendation as he presented his firm’s audit of the district’s financial records for the year that ended June 30. Estep gave a clean, or unmodified, opinion of the district’s revenues and expenses. But he stressed the importance of a mechanism in which whistleblowers, most likely district employees, can call attention to things that do not appear to be proper. Dr. Michael Thorsland, district superintendent, told the trustees there’s a way messages received by a phone hot line can be converted to text and distributed to the eyes of officials who need to see them. According to auditor Estep, there’s great emphasis nationwide on how to combat and prevent fraud, especially in business or government entities that handle large amounts of funds. In the case of the Oconee district, it’s an operations that counts more than $100 million a year in expenses and revenues.