All county offices that collect money are being asked to develop written procedures for handling that money by Jasper County Auditor Richard Webster.

The offices are also being asked to have separate people collecting money and recording that money to safeguard against theft.

Webster said the changes are in response to what were cited as problems in the county's annual audit and what the federal government cited as problems in a surprise audit of a large EPA grant to the Jasper County Health Department.

"When auditors come in, they have guidelines they have to follow," Webster said. "Sometimes it doesn't matter what all you do, you can be doing everything you can, if it doesn't meet everything they expect, they can write you up. I feel like this is a first step, it's something that's never been addressed. It's always just been blown off."

Webster said for several years, the county's annual audit has cited some county offices that collect fees of taxes for having the same people who collect money and record the money collected, leaving the county open to possible theft.

"Our response to this for many years has been we do not have the resources to hire personnel," Webster said. "We've also made the statement that all of our employees are bonded, we have $100,000 security bond and employee dishonesty bond that covers everybody.

"We have to  send a copy of the audit report to the bonding company and the bonding company looks at that and says, no, no way. The bonding company has objected this time so we have to take action."

In addition, the federal government came in and audited a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Jasper County Health Department and cited a lack of written procedures for handling and administering grants.

"The federal government wants everything you do in writing," Webster said. "They want you to have procedures and you have to follow their guidelines. We have to develop guidelines and we're going to do that this year in response to the audit of the EPA grants."

At Thursday's elected officials meeting, following the County Commissioner's weekly meeting, Webster asked every county official to work on developing written money-handling procedures and guidelines.

I'm going to help them do this, but every office that handles money, reviews their procedures for handling money and that they develop written procedures that safeguard the proper handling of money to where not one person is doing everything," Webster said. "We'll have those procedures on file and we would review them, then when the outside auditor comes in, we can say here's our procedures for handling money in this office."

Webster said he hopes to have all these procedures written down and on file in his office by the end of 2008.