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State Auditor Klutz visits Greencastle
Indiana State Auditor Tera Klutz visited Greencastle Tuesday for a budget workshop with county auditors.
Klutz became Indiana’s 57th Auditor of State after being appointed by Governor Eric Holcomb Jan. 2, and shortly thereafter established her executive team and top initiatives.
“It’s been a fast few months just getting acclimated to the new role,” Klutz said. “My experience as a CPA (certified public accountant) and former county auditor prepared me well for the transition.”
From her time as a CPA (the first ever appointed), Klutz has made her first priority to develop internal controls within her office.
“Basically, internal controls are a way to ensure that what we’re reporting is accurate so it reduces the opportunities for fraud,” Klutz said. “And with all the technology, all our processes are becoming more electronic, and we’re using technology to provide better, faster service, but ... we just don’t want to lose any of the checks and balances that were automatically built in.”
While serving as a county auditor in Allen County, Klutz was “one of a few” who supported legislation requiring all local governments to establish and complete training for internal controls. However, all state agencies except the Department of Revenue and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles were not included.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t start the process voluntarily,” Klutz said. “So I want to start in our office and then make it available -- basically, you want to just have a relationship that the state agencies trust you, that you’re there to help them do their job better. Because everybody assumes the information’s correct, until it’s not. Trust but verify.”
Although it seems counterintuitive, Klutz’s initiative to set accuracy standards for other state agencies is not part of her job as State Auditor.
“A lot of people think that’s my job because I’m the state auditor,” Klutz said, “but really I’m just Chief Financial Officer. We do budgets, revenue, we pay the bills and pay employees. We also distribute millions of dollars to local units of government, so on the revenue that’s collected by other agencies, that funnels through our office. We allocate that and distribute that to all local units of government around the state.”
Another of Klutz’s goals is to build relationships and get feedback from the county auditors “to find our what’s working, what’s not working.” She recently joined the Association of Indiana Counties so she could teach Tuesday’s budget class to new county officials and help deliver a legislative update.
“I believe that we’re an administrator,” Klutz said, “so we’re a service provider to all state agencies and local units of government across Indiana. From a local citizen’s standpoint, I think government for the people, by the people, is the best way, and so you have to build trust and to build trust you have to be as transparent as possible. If they’re going to come and ask anything related to state finances, we want to make sure that we can get it for them.”
Klutz plans to make the Indiana Transparency Portal (at http://www.in.gov/itp/ ) more user-friendly by knowing what users want to know and having relevant information ready for them.
“So, like the top-ten state-paid employees,” Klutz said, “the top-ten vendors the state pays, at your fingertips. Right now if you go out there you would have to look through all the state agencies and tabulate it up yourself, which is a lot of work. We’re going to try to get ahead of the game and find out what people want.”
Klutz also hopes to “unify the state agencies’ use of technology.”
“Because so many agencies are out there trying to get the next best thing, it’s important for us as a state to coordinate our technology needs to make sure we’re taking advantage of the state’s quantity purchasing,” Klutz said, “to make sure that if you’ve already bought something over here, can we use that over here? So we are working with the Indiana Office of Technology as well as the State Budget Agency just to ensure we’re not overlapping some of those initiatives.”
To learn more about the State Auditor’s Office or Tera Klutz, visit http://www.in.gov/auditor/ .