{"id":28975,"date":"2021-01-29T11:16:29","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T17:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=28975"},"modified":"2021-01-29T11:16:29","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T17:16:29","slug":"fines-sought-for-late-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=28975","title":{"rendered":"Fines sought for late reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cities, counties and other political subdivisions in Nebraska could be fined for filing late reports with the state under a bill considered Jan. 29 by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
\u00a0Sen. Rita Sanders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Government entities that fail to file required reports with the state Auditor of Public Accounts could be fined $20 a day \u2014 up to $2,000 total per filing \u2014 under LB368, introduced by Bellevue Sen. Rita Sanders.<\/p>\n

As introduced, the bill also would allow the office to conduct the audit at the subdivision\u2019s expense. Sanders provided an amendment to remove that provision, saying the auditor already has that authority under current state law.<\/p>\n

Sanders said 309 reports were filed late in the 2019 fiscal year and 19 subdivisions have yet to file for that year making them late by anywhere from 120 to 394 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cChasing these reports down can be frustrating and expensive for the auditor\u2019s office and prevents the public from seeing the results of the audit in a timely manner,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Russ Karpisek of the auditor\u2019s office testified in support of the bill. On-time filing would increase transparency and save money, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no teeth [in statute] to make people get their audits and budgets and things in on time,\u201d Karpisek said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing we can really do right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karpisek added that the auditor\u2019s office could waive the fine if a government entity had a valid reason for filing late.<\/p>\n

No one spoke in opposition to LB368 and the committee took no immediate action on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cities, counties and other political subdivisions in Nebraska could be fined for filing late reports with the state under a bill considered Jan. 29 by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[266],"class_list":["post-28975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-rita-sanders"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28978,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28975\/revisions\/28978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}