MARION—While Marion Auditor Robert Landon continues to recover from COVID, Deputy Auditor Marden Watts took on the heat yet again during Monday’s Marion City Council meeting.
The city has until September 30th to reconcile their books with the State Auditor’s Office.
If the city does not reconcile its books, they could lose millions of dollars in federal funding. According to Watts, he believes the office will meet the deadline even though they must recover about 13,000 individual reports from utility billing accounts to complete the report.
Even though he was unable to participate in the city council meeting, Landon was able to speak to the Marion Star. Landon told the newspaper that the reason his audits were not complete is because he does a more extensive process than other cities. Landon also claims the books have balanced ever since he took office.
Marion City Council President Ayers Ratliff disagrees:
“Our auditor has continued his lying charades for almost two years. The problem he has is that the clock is ticking, and he can only keep this up for another 15 days. September 30th approaching quickly and can cost all Marion citizens a great deal,” Ratliff said.
Ratliff went on to allege continuing errors; “payroll issues and other catastrophic issues continue in his office even through yesterday. To mess up this badly, one would have to mess something up every day,” Ratliff said.
Landon told the Marion Star, “To say we’ve never balanced; I don’t understand where they are getting that information because it’s not true. We have balanced. We’re just trying to balance the way they prefer,” Landon said.