Accountant recommends changes to streamline county finances

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — While crunching numbers isn’t the most pleasant task in county government, there are many ways to make the job easier and more user-friendly.
    That was the opinion of Christopher Backman of RHR Smith and Co., the firm doing the Piscataquis County audit.

    Backman was introduced to the county commissioners by Finance Administrator John Baiamonte at last week’s meeting, who urged them to accept the accountant’s recommendations, which also include some in-house training.
    “I came to realize that we’re not using TRIO (a municipal accounting system) at 100 percent of its capacity. We’re probably using at 10 or 20 percent, from what I can tell,” Baiamonte said.
    But Baiamonte noted that the TRIO installers and programmers “are technical people. They don’t have the financial background to explain why things are put in a certain way.”
    Baiamonte, who was a CPA with Edwards, Faust and Smith, was hired in April and said that that he spent the first month on the job “learning the way things were being done here and past practices. The reoccurring theme I was getting around here was ‘That’s just the way we’ve always done it.’”
    One of Baiamonte’s first concerns was why the county had 23 bank accounts. “Again — the same answer: We have to have them because that’s the way it’s always been done,” he said.
    Backman said that the majority of his firm’s clients — more than 200 municipalities and five counties —use TRIO software.
    One advantage, he explained, is that the system will credit and debit everything on the county commissioners’ warrants automatically instead of having someone manually enter the information. “So I’m proposing to streamline the whole operation,” Backman said. “TRIO can handle the county, the UT (unorganized territory) and jail budgets. It will show you where you stand (financially) and where you are going forward.”
    Backman said that, in his opinion, part of the reason why Piscataquis County hasn’t embraced TRIO was because of the previous auditors. “He didn’t understand TRIO and some of the things he could turn on and off,” he said.
    Interim Town Manager Tom Lizotte recapped the history of the TRIO system, which was brought in at the recommendation of one of his predecessors, former Dover-Foxcroft Town Manager Owen Pratt. “Sometimes when you bring in a new system, you don’t use anywhere near the capabilities that it has,” said Lizotte.
    Backman said that Baiamonte has already started making some changes that will eventually save both staff time and money. However, he also recommended that someone from his firm work with the county staff on the transition.
    Sheriff John Goggin asked what would happen if the Maine Board of Corrections “goes away — and everything falls back on the county?” Backman said that the separate jail account would just be phased into the regular county budget. “I’m guessing that it’s going to happen,” he added.
    Baiamonte said that his goal is to have audits complete between 120 and 140 days after the fiscal year ends. “That’s not unrealistic, but we haven’t been doing it,” he said.
    He also said that utilizing TRIO to its fullest capabilities would make it easier to keep the budgets on track. “We haven’t been doing that. At the end of the year, we just fix everything,” he said. “These are all improvements that will come.”