SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- An audit of the city of Shepherdsville's finances found “an urgent need (to) make prompt changes.”

The audit was ordered by city council in January to examine financial expenditures of the city from 2013 to 2016 while former mayors Scott Ellis and Brian James were in office.

A total of 116 different transactions over the period were examined, and around 20 percent of them were found to be questionable, according to the audit.

Many of the issues with the transactions were how they were documented and protocols that were in place to monitor how the money was spent.

“There's plenty of room to document what the expense was for and what should be reimbursed and things like that,” said Joe Legel of Jones, Nale and Mattingly, who was paid $15,000 to complete the audit.

Current Mayor Curtis Hockenberry said during Monday’s city council meeting that many of the issues the audit found have already been corrected. For instance, he said that previously, the city had 14 credit cards, which he reduced those to four. He also said any city expense over $1,000 has to be approved by him.

“Another area was an employee approved their own expense report," Legel said. "So obviously, we want someone other than the person requesting the expense to approve it."

Perhaps one of the lingering questions after the audit is in regards to payments made to Shepherdsville’s previous two mayors.

In February of 2016, then-Mayor Scott Ellis resigned in the midst of a sex scandal. Soon thereafter, Brian James was chosen by city council to replace Ellis. But then in August, a judge ruled that Ellis was still the mayor because he did not resign properly.

The audit discovered that when Ellis was reinstated for one day as mayor before resigning again, someone cut a check for both him and James. The audit found that both men were paid for the same job during the same period of time.

“Did you all request those checks to see who signed them?” asked council member Bonnie Enlow.

“No,” Legel replied.

Enlow went on to say that the issue “needs to be investigated.”

All told, the audit recommended 17 different changes that the city council could implement that would create better accountability with regards to taxpayer money.

City council is expected to enact at least some of those changes at its next regularly scheduled meeting. 

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