The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
Posted November 18, 2024
Last August, Foster County commissioners claimed that nearly $100,000 was owed to them by Wells County, which caught several county officials there off guard.
The nearly $100K amounted to four years' worth of social service payments owed to Foster County that hadn't been distributed, and Wells County commissioners only learned of the problem after an article came out in the Independent.
In the months since, Wells County Auditor Dan Stutlien and others have been poring over hundreds of payments and invoices dating back to 2020, and now a resolution has been reached that will see both Foster and Eddy County receiving sizable checks.
The source of the problem dates back to 2019 with the creation of "human service zones" in North Dakota, which took the responsibility of social services away from each county and instead established a number of state-funded zones.
Foster and Wells counties are joined by Eddy County to comprise the Central Prairie Human Service Zone (Central Prairie), which provides critical social services to residents of their communities.
As Central Prairie's host county, Wells County has been receiving state funding with the expectation that some of those funds would be distributed to each of the zone's other counties. But for years that never happened.
“We discovered that some of the things we were funding with what are known as indirect costs, were actually direct costs,” said Stutlien about what they uncovered while looking back on old invoices.
Indirect costs for social services include expenses such as electricity, water and maintenance for the Foster County Courthouse.
Those expenses are indirectly supporting social services because there are social service offices located in the courthouse basement, and a portion of indirect costs incurred by the counties are supposed to be reimbursed.
In this case, Foster County State’s Attorney Kara Brinster said Wells County was paying for indirect costs attributable to Foster County such as car repairs, a copier lease and for telephone services.
“So to make a long story short, we went back and looked at every expense going all the way back to 2020, and figured out things that should be transferred, things that should be shifted, and we ultimately came up with a financial resolution based on that,” said Stutlien.
More specifically, he said Foster County will soon be receiving a check for $81,167.12, which accounts for the indirect cost reimbursements they’re owed.
Eddy County, meanwhile, will be receiving a check for $76,762.75, also accounting for years' worth of undistributed reimbursements.
It was even discovered that Wells County is also owed a significant amount of money, and they’ll soon be receiving $58,159.43 directly from Central Prairie.
“The human service zone is also going to have to reimburse Wells County for expenses that we incurred on behalf of the other two counties over the course of that 5-year time span,” said Stutlien.
With these checks to be sent out soon, it appears all parties are pleased with the financial resolution.
At the Foster County Commission meeting on Thursday, Nov. 7, commissioners expressed their relief that an amicable resolution was finally reached, and Eddy County Commissioner Glenda Collier, who also sits on the Central Prairie board, said she too is pleased with the outcome.
As for how distribution of payments were inaccurate for so long, Foster County commissioner and Central Prairie board member Becky Hagel, said she believes turnover in Wells County and at Central Prairie likely contributed to a lack of communication and/or confusion.
Stutlien took the Wells County Auditor position in July of 2021, but he was only made aware of this problem last summer, despite Hagel having brought it up at Central Prairie meetings several times over the years.
Since delving deep into the invoices and learning how payments should have been determined, he told the Independent the process is complicated and difficult to understand.
“I will be happy to get out from underneath this,” said Stutlien. “I knew it was going to be more complex than some folks wanted to believe that it would be from the get-go, but we wanted to make sure we did what was right.”
Moving forward, language has already been amended in Central Prairie’s plan to address the problem, and all parties seem confident it won’t happen again.
