Summary

This audit of the Office of the Public Defender, Fifth Judicial Circuit, focused primarily on assets, liabilities, fund equities, expenditures and disbursements, budgetary controls, and management reporting. For each of these areas, our audit included examinations of various transactions (as well as events and conditions) during the period July 1, 1997, through June 30, 1998. A matter coming to our attention relating to noncompliance with various guidelines and those relating to significant deficiencies in the design or operation of the system of internal control for those operations audited is as follows:

Payroll Direct Deposit Program

Section 110.113(2), Florida Statutes, requires all persons appointed to a position in State government on or after July 1, 1996, to participate in the payroll direct deposit program (receipt of salary payments via electronic funds transfers made directly to the employee’s financial institution) as a condition of such employment. While Office of the Public Defender policy regarding the payroll direct deposit program was to provide new employees with the forms necessary to enroll in the program and to inform the employees that enrollment is a condition of employment, the Office had not established effective follow-up procedures to ensure that all new employees eventually enrolled in the program. Our tests disclosed several instances in which employees had not enrolled in the program within three months after their respective hire dates. (See paragraphs 19 through 22.)

The Public Defender’s written response to the audit findings and recommendations included in audit report No. 13373 is presented as Exhibit D.