FLINT, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The city of Flint has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid since the pandemic.
The city received $99 million as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the state of Michigan gave it another $170 million in 2023 to deal with its looming pension crisis. The city oversees a $125.7 million a year budget.
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Yet, the city has had consistently been unable to meet state deadlines to produce audited financial documents.
On Feb. 12, the Department of Treasury warned the city that it had yet to submit the mandated Annual Local Unit Fiscal Report for 2024. The Treasury stated it could complete the financial document itself if the city didn’t provide it, and a penalty could be withholding state revenues due to Flint.
As of May 2, the Local Government Document Search Site run by the Department of Treasury, does not list the city of Flint as producing the mandated documents, nearly three months overdue.
The city of Flint and the Michigan Department of Treasury did not return messages asking for the status of the city’s financial documents.
Flint’s fiscal year ends June 30. The city of Detroit’s fiscal year also ends June 30. While Detroit shares the same fiscal year as Flint, but Detroit has had its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for 2024 posted on the state website as of Dec. 30. Flint has yet to produce its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for 2024. Last year, it didn’t produce the 2023 annual report until Nov. 1, 2024.
The treasury has sent out letters in the past to the city of Flint alerting them they were late reporting on various financial documents in Feb. 2024 and Jan. 2023.
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The tardiness for reporting on city finances should be worrisome to taxpayers because of the Flint’s track record for spotty financial record keeping.
In the 2023 audit, the accounting firm Rehmann noted the significant difficulties it had completing that audit due to the city’s accounting issues.
Rehmann stated of its 2023 work: “The timing of our audit procedures was significantly delayed from the schedule agreed to during the planning stages of our engagement due to appropriate supporting information not being made available to us in a timely manner, numerous audit adjustments due to lack of reconciling accounts and not posting necessary adjustments timely, multiple incorrect prepared Schedules of Expenditures of Federal Awards, not properly implementing GASB 87 and 96, and unreconciled capital asset schedules. These issues resulted in the audit taking a significantly extended amount of time to complete.”
Those auditor notes were removed from the 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report post on the city of Flint’s website.