Nesbitt & Associates will assist the Seward County Commissioners and Seward County Sheriff’s Department efforts to better explain to local and federal officials how expenditures made from forfeiture programs are supporting drug interdiction work via better reports.
Auditors Matthew M. Sutter, a public safety consultant, and Thomas Nesbitt, Nesbitt & Associates chief executive officer and president, on Sept. 22 shared their audit recommendations with county officials for July 2023 through April 2025 expenditures of the Seward County Drug Interdiction Task Force.
Those included improving inventory methods to track expenditures and comply with new purchasing policies and federal guidelines for the program.
On Oct. 7, the commissioners and Sheriff Mike Vance deliberated the scope of work needed on the inventory and agreed to ask Sutter and Nesbitt to return to clarify their recommendation.
On Oct. 28, Sutter and Nesbitt told commissioners and the sheriff that better inventory practices would help to show that equipment purchases and other expenses support drug interdiction, which would meet federal reporting requirements and law enforcement industry best practice standards.
Sutter said inventory records could provide the who, what and how needed for reports, better enabling the department to tie expenditures back to the drug interdiction and crime investigations work they do.
For example, reports could note equipment purchased with forfeiture funds for the task force, which deputy it was assigned to, and the amount of time or cases involving drug interdiction work that deputy was involved in for a specific year.
Sutter said he and Nesbitt were not provided the department’s current inventory reports during the audit, although they were requested.
“We were told that they did not exist,” he said.
Having to track down information about expenditures through the clerk’s office and sheriff’s office added to the time it took to perform the audit, Sutter said.
But he said the existing inventory report – which includes basic equipment information and whether it was purchased with county or task force funding – could be more useful if data about how the item, training, or staffing funds were used.
“The way to tie it all together is that at the end of the year, it is tied to the payroll” data, Sutton said.
Nesbitt said the existing documents were not terrible and the sheriff’s department is not trying to hide anything, but including additional data would “make a significant difference.”
Getting information from multiple data sources into one report would help track inventory “correctly and accurately,” he said.
Vance said the department can track the kinds of calls deputies respond to, but those are recorded in a separate database used by dispatchers. He questioned how that would comply with the forfeiture programs’ guidelines.
Commissioner Darrell Zabrocki also expressed some concern.
“To take it to this next level, I think, is asking a lot,” Zabrocki said.
But Sutter said the process should not be cumbersome.
“We are making it harder than it needs to be. The vast number of departments I have worked with are doing this,” he said.
Zabrocki, Commissioner Scott Pekarek and Vance have been working on a purchase order process and policy for the task force, and Sutter and Nesbitt will now consult with them regarding the inventory report.
Commission Chair Misty Ahmic asked that they report back to the commission at its Nov. 18 meeting.
The Nesbitt audit report indicated there was no evidence of fraud or obvious mismanagement in the Seward County Sheriff’s Office expenditure of drug interdiction funds, but pointed to areas where weak control and documentation processes “elevate compliance and reputational risk” in the department.
They cited the need for control and documentation practices to ensure Seward County Drug Interdiction Task Force expenditures that should be covered by the sheriff’s departmental budget are not being paid with funds disbursed from the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Justice.
While the audit identified “serious compliance risks,” the auditors said in their Sept. 22 presentation to the commissioners that the department could still “restore compliance, safeguard resources and rebuild community trust.”
The Seward County Drug Interdiction Task Force is now non-compliant with the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Justice because it has not yet submitted its Equitable Sharing Agreement and Certification (ESAC) report that was due Aug. 30.
That report was delayed by the commissioners, who must sign it, because of questions about the data on the report and the Department of Treasury’s designation of the department in a “do not spend” status due to questions about some expenditures that may not have been directly tied to the drug interdiction task force’s work.
The commissioners had indicated they could be ready to sign the report at the Oct. 28 meeting but tabled that because their legal counsel was not present.
In another related item on Oct. 28, the commissioners withdrew the department’s 2024-25 inventory from a batch of county department inventories it approved after Commissioner Raegan Hain questioned the exclusion of Flock Safety cameras from the list.
The cameras facilitate traffic monitoring with automated license plate readers (ALPR) and were originally expected to be installed in Seward. That plan was changed at a March 4 commissioners meeting because of city and other concerns.
The department said at the time the cameras were part of a lease that would give the county access to the Flock data network for investigations involving people in metropolitan areas.
Commissioners said the equipment may be on loan to another department, but Hain noted it is important to list all departmental property because the board is responsible for all county property.
