County Inspector General: No fraud tied to accounting blunder

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It may have been a big blunder, but there was nothing nefarious going on when Cook County double counted $90 million in revenue during the last fiscal year under former County Board President Todd Stroger.

That’s according to Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard who released a report on his investigation in to the matter Wednesday stating: “The evidence developed during the course of this investigation does not support a contention that Cook County employees intended to commit accounting fraud.”

Blanchard wrote that the “unintentional errors” were the result of high turnover in the comptroller’s office resulting in a “confused environment contributing to the accounting errors.”

He also cautioned that some changes were needed because “these conditions continue to exist in the comptroller’s office.”

County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s office didn’t comment on the report.

Preckwinkle first revealed the financial reporting errors last month, explaining that her financial team found some discrepancies while preparing for a routing audit of the 2010 books. When they dug deeper by going in to reports for the previous year, they found duplicate journal entries for the sales tax revenue — $66 million — as well as the cigarette, gasoline and parking taxes — $24 million, officials told the Sun-Times in June.

While it didn’t leave the county scrambling for millions to cover costs, it did result in Moody’s Investment Services downgrading the county’s bond rating.