T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Belmont County Commissioner Josh Meyer thanks DJFS Director Jeff Felton and Fiscal Administrator Jack Regis Jr. for their hard work.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Susanne Simpson, SouthEast Region liaison for the Ohio Auditor’s Office, visited the Belmont County commissioners meeting Wednesday to present the county Department of Job and Family Services with the Perfect Audit Award.

“The award is presented to local governments and school districts upon completion of a financial audit that meets the following criteria for a clean audit: This entity must file their financial reports to the Auditor of the State within 150 days of their fiscal year end, have a clean audit with no findings for recovery, material citations, weaknesses, significant deficiencies audit findings or questioned costs,” Simpson said. “The entity’s management letter must not contain any comments related to ethics, referrals, questioned costs less than $10,000, lack of timely report submissions, failure to obtain a timely single audit or findings for recovery less than $100.”

Simpson noted that the entity also should have no additional financial concerns, and that the award represents all of the hard work that the DJFS staff does.

“I would really like to congratulate (you) on behalf of the Auditor of the State Keith Faber for your fiscal integrity and your commitment to fiscal excellence,” Simpson said.

DJFS Director Jeff Felton and Fiscal Administrator Jack Regis Jr. were present to accept the award.

“We are very proud of the job that is being done, and we congratulate these two gentlemen,” Commissioner Jerry Echemann said.

Echemann proceeded to ask Felton to speak about the award.

“We are the fiscal agent for Area 16, which is Jefferson, Harrison, Carroll and Belmont counties. We handle all of the fiscal bill paying and so forth, so we get audited but it does reflect on what all of the counties in the area do when it comes to workforce development,” Felton said. “It’s not really my award — it’s Mr. Regis and his team that really does all of the work.”

Felton joked that his only criteria is that the staff keep him out of jail. He then noted that DJFS staff appreciates the recognition for their hard work.

“We try to be really good stewards of the taxpayers dollar regardless of resource of local, state, or federal dollars,” Felton said.

Echemann asked if this is the first time that Job and Family Services has received this award.

“We converted to attempt the perfect audit award back in 2015-16 I believe. The first year we were not successful and received a few minor reporting errors that we had to correct. Every year since then we have met the standards established by the Auditor of the State to receive this award,” Regis said. “We really could not achieve this without the support of the commissioners blessing and allowing us to contract Fiscal Consultant Rebecca Safko, who’s the Director of Area 15. I call her our fiscal guru because if you ask her a question, what she sends you back, it’s not a two-sentence response but a very detailed paragraph response.”

Commissioners J.P. Dutton and Josh Meyer told Felton and Regis they appreciate their continued hard work and dedication. Dutton praised Felton for always making it a point to acknowledge and credit his staff’s dedication to the residents of Belmont County.