Alabama Orders a Sheriff to Repay $5M From His County's Bingo Fund

The Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts⧉ -- the state agency, independent of the governor, whose examiners audit every Alabama sheriff and county official under a constitutional mandate -- has found that Greene County Sheriff Jonathan M. Benison cannot document how $5.34 million⧉ of a $16.9 million bingo license fund was spent.▸ After Benison submitted additional evidence on appeal, examiners relieved $370,383.08 of the charge -- leaving $4,966,427.69 due and unpaid⧉, a balance the report says will now be certified to the district attorney and the Alabama attorney general for collection.

The Bingo Fund exists because a 2003 amendment to Alabama's constitution lets nonprofit organizations run bingo games in Greene County, with the Sheriff licensing operators and setting the rules.▸ It is not a general operating account: Section 32-7.00 of the Constitution of Alabama of 2022⧉ authorizes the Sheriff only to license, permit and regulate the games -- it does not authorize spending the license fees and proceeds on other law-enforcement costs. Examiners found the Sheriff's own department rules stretched that authority anyway, letting bingo money supplement staff salaries and cover other law-enforcement purposes⧉ -- a standing violation of the section that created the fund, separate from the documentation charges.

Over the October 2018-April 2024 examination period⧉, the fund collected $4.05 million in license fees and $12.88 million in bingo proceeds -- $16.94 million total.▸ The $5.34 million in charges works out to 31.5% of everything the fund ever took in, by this outlet's own arithmetic on the report's totals -- the report itself states the dollar figures but not the percentage.

The largest single charge, $3.16 million⧉, covers payments made directly to 38 named individuals from the Bingo Fund -- on top of the salaries the County Commission already paid them, reported to the IRS as non-employee compensation -- for which examiners found no supporting documentation to substantiate why the payments were made⧉.▸ None of it was relieved on appeal; all $3.16 million remains unpaid. The fund's books show $4.85 million total paid out under "Incentive Pay to Employees" over the period -- meaning about 65% of everything the office paid out under that category, by this outlet's own arithmetic, is the portion examiners could not document. A second charge of $2.16 million covers check and debit-card payments to consultants, attorneys, merchants, restaurants, hotels, auto-repair shops, gas stations and grocery stores -- $1.18 million of it to consultants and attorneys alone -- of which $1.79 million remains unpaid after a $366,559 partial relief.

A third, smaller charge of $16,227 covers undocumented payments to a tire company and a vending company from separate funds.▸ The fund also transferred $3.11 million to the Greene County Commission itself over the same period -- the only line item that reached the county government directly, and less than what went to the 38 individually charged employees.

Alabama's Minimum Accounting Requirements -- rules the state's Chief Examiner sets under Code of Alabama 1975, Section 41-5A-21⧉ -- require every sheriff's office to reconcile bank accounts monthly, keep cashbooks that reflect all activity, and document every disbursement.▸ Three of this report's five findings -- unreconciled bank accounts, incomplete cashbooks, and inadequate cash controls -- were first reported in a 2014 audit and reported again, unresolved, in 2018⧉; the documentation finding underlying the $5.3 million in charges was itself first raised in 2018. A recommendation that goes unaddressed for a decade is not a paperwork lag -- it means three consecutive state examinations told the same office to fix the same controls, and the office did not, until the dollar figure attached to that gap reached eight figures before relief.

Examiners also noted that Benison refused to provide a management representation letter⧉ -- the routine written assurance, standard on every such examination, that all financial records were made available and that the office complied with applicable law.▸ Its absence does not itself prove wrongdoing, but it is the office declining the one document meant to make an examiner's job easier.

Benison has disputed the findings publicly, calling the audit a "vendetta of the forces in Montgomery"⧉ and saying the flagged spending included scholarships for graduating high-school seniors and payments to the deputies who "protect and serve our county."▸ He says he has documentation justifying the expenditures and "didn't back down" on a prior lawsuit and won't now⧉. The examiners' report does not name a scholarship program among the charged items; the $3.16 million charge is explicitly for payments to individuals reported as 1099 non-employee compensation, and the $2.16 million charge is for consultants, attorneys and vendors -- categories the report attributes to inadequate documentation rather than to any specific disallowed purpose.

The report's own next step is concrete: the $4.97 million balance is certified to the Greene County District Attorney and the Alabama Attorney General for collection.▸ Voters had the audit's findings public for the better part of a year -- filed October 3, 2025⧉ -- before Benison won renomination in the May 20, 2026 primary with 63% of the vote⧉. Nothing in the examiners' report or the collection referral removes him from office or blocks further terms; Alabama's process for an elected sheriff who does not pay a certified charge runs through the courts, not the ballot box alone.