A713
If you have questions on any aspect of this report, please contact Dr. William J. Erpenbach, director, divisionwide planning and process, 267-1072. He will be happy to discuss these with you at your convenience.
Sincerely,
John T. Benson
State Superintendent
Referred to committee on Education.
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Agency Reports
State of Wisconsin
Legislative Audit Bureau
Madison
December 19, 1995
To the Honorable, the Legislature:
We have completed an evaluation of methods for allocating district attorney positions, as requested be the Joint Legislative Audit Committee. District attorney positions were transferred from county to state employment in 1990.
Currently, there are 360.5 authorized full-time equivalent state prosecutor positions. State expenditures for prosecutorial responsibilities totaled $28.4 million in fiscal year 1994-95. The current distribution of district attorney positions is largely a result of county staffing decisions made before the transfer to state employment. Although there has been an 8.6 percent increase in positions since 1990, the majority of requests have been denied, in part because of insufficient information about district attorney workload and questions concerning the accuracy of available information in portraying actual workload.
We include a number of recommendations to make the existing caseload measures more accurate by including more types of cases in the measure, recognizing the effect of homicides on case weights, and improving reporting to make data more comparable among counties. Once the caseload measure is made more accurate, it could be used to compare actual workload against a standard in order to evaluate position increase requests. To do so, a workload goal or standard would need to be established, similar to workload standards established for circuit court judges.
We also note that under current statutes, legislative control over the authorization of additional prosecutor positions can be bypassed by appointment and local funding of certain special prosecutor positions. If the Legislature wishes to restrict such activity in order to maintain property tax relief efforts by ensuring that only state funds are used for prosecutors, statutes governing the appointment and funding of public service special prosecutors need to be modified.
We appreciate the courtesy and cooperation extended to us by State Prosecutors Office staff, district attorneys, and court staff throughout the state. The response of the State Prosecutors Office is Appendix V.
Respectfully submitted,
Dale Cattanach
State Auditor
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State of Wisconsin
Legislative Audit Bureau
Madison
December 21, 1995
To the Honorable, the Legislature:
We have completed an audit of the Office of the State Treasurer, covering the period July 1, 1994 to June 30, 1995, as part of our audit of the State's comprehensive financial statements for fiscal year 1994-95 and to fulfill our audit responsibilities under s.
13.94, Wis. Stats.
A principal responsibility of the Office is to collect the State's portion of various fees, fines, forfeitures, assessments, taxes, and other remittances due from counties and other municipalities, including cities, villages, and towns. We found that while the Office has taken reasonable steps to ensure it receives monthly and quarterly collections reports from the counties, effective procedures are not in place to ensure the receipt of all payments due. For example, Milwaukee County has not remitted the State's share of required marriage licenses fees for at least five years; its unremitted marriage license fees estimated to total $1 million in general purpose revenue. Milwaukee County has, however, recently remitted $24,000 in general program revenue for past-due dog license fees as a result of our audit work.
We also found that Racine and Lafayette counties have not remitted either marriage or dog license fees that are at least one year past due and may include an additional $80,000 in general purpose and program revenues, and that Marathon County's remittance of $21,900 in marriage license fees, which the Office should have recorded as general purpose revenue, was instead mistakenly recorded as program revenue from dog license fees. The recording error has since been corrected. Our report recommends steps by which the Office can ensure receipt of appropriate payments from counties and municipalities.
The Office of the State Treasurer also administers the Unclaimed Property program, through which it attempts to return cash, investment securities, and other property left with banks and insurance companies to the rightful owners. In prior audit reports, we discussed the needs for improving security over unclaimed property by limiting access to computer records and establishing additional verification procedures. The Office has since addressed most of our concerns, although it still needs to reconcile its unclaimed property records to those maintained on the State's central accounting system.
We appreciate the courtesy and cooperation extended to us by the Office's staff during the audit. The State Treasurer's response is the appendix.
Respectfully submitted,
Dale Cattanach
State Auditor
