Auditors Give County “Cleanest Opinion Possible” With Five Findings

Article Summary: Auditors from Scheffel Boyle distributed completed fiscal 2025 audit reports to the Montgomery County Board on Tuesday, telling members the firm issued the cleanest opinion possible and that county receipts exceeded expenses by $1.5 million. Two findings were reported on internal controls and three on federal expenditures. The board will vote on the audit next month.

FY2025 Audit Key Points:

Robyn Klingler and Hope Peters of Scheffel Boyle presented; a detailed report went to the Finance & Budget Committee the previous week.

Klingler said the auditor issued “the cleanest opinion possible.”

The internal controls report contained two findings; the report on federal expenditures contained three.

Countywide receipts exceeded expenses by $1.5 million in fiscal 2025; Chairwoman Connie Beck asked members to review the audit before voting next month.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY — Robyn Klingler and Hope Peters of the Alton accounting firm Scheffel Boyle distributed completed fiscal 2025 audit reports to the Montgomery County Board on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, and Klingler told members the firm had issued the cleanest opinion possible on the county’s finances.

Klingler said the two had given a detailed report to the Finance & Budget Committee the previous week. She described the audit process, which she said includes examination of receipts, purchases and payroll along with conferences with third parties, such as confirming coal royalty payments — a significant item for a county whose coal royalty fund holds more than $10 million.

The report on internal controls contained two findings, Klingler said, and the report on federal expenditures contained three. The minutes do not describe what any of the five findings are.

She told the board that in total, county receipts exceeded expenses by $1.5 million in fiscal 2025.

Finance & Budget Committee Chairwoman Connie Beck asked the board to review the audit over the next month before voting on it. No motion was taken Tuesday, and the audit stands as received rather than accepted.

A Deadline in the Background

The timing of Tuesday’s presentation reflects a filing clock the county has already extended once.

Documents included in the county’s committee materials show that the Illinois Comptroller’s office granted Montgomery County a 60-day extension to file its fiscal 2025 annual report and audit, moving the due date to July 28, 2026. The comptroller’s notice warns that reports filed after an extended due date are subject to fines and to a forced audit process, and that no separate delinquency notice is issued.

The same materials include a separate certification, signed by Circuit Clerk Daniel T. Robbins, that the county board granted an extension with an end date of Nov. 30, 2026, for completion of the audit of the Circuit Clerk’s office.

County records describe fiscal 2026 as running from Dec. 1, 2025, through Nov. 30, 2026, meaning the fiscal year the auditors examined closed more than seven months before Tuesday’s meeting.

What the Record Leaves Open

Neither the audit report nor a management letter nor a schedule of findings was reproduced in the meeting materials, so the substance of the five findings is not on the public record. The $1.5 million figure Klingler cited is described in the minutes as a countywide total of receipts over expenses; it is not broken out by fund, and it should not be read as a General Fund result.

That distinction matters because the county has spent much of the past year anticipating a General Fund shortfall of roughly half a million dollars, driven substantially by a $250,000 wind farm application permit fee that was budgeted as revenue and never filed. Whether that shortfall materialized cannot be determined from Tuesday’s minutes.

The board’s next regular meeting, at which the audit vote is expected, is set for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026, in the County Board Room at the Historic Courthouse in Hillsboro.