A Missouri County Budgeted $0 for ARPA, Then Spent $2.82M of It
Summary
A Missouri State Auditor's Office review found Morgan County's actual disbursements exceeded its budgeted disbursements by $2,964,190 in 2024 -- 95 percent of it, $2,820,872, spent through an ARPA relief fund the county had budgeted at zero dollars and never amended. The same audit found the County Commission gave the sheriff mid-term pay raises totaling $37,437, which the auditor says violated the Missouri Constitution's ban on increasing an officeholder's compensation during their term -- a defense the county built on a court ruling and an attorney general letter that the auditor's own rebuttal says do not support the county's reading.
A zero-dollar line that became $2.82 million
State law is direct about this: Section 50.740, RSMo, prohibits counties from spending more than budgeted, and Section 50.622 spells out when a budget amendment is even allowed. Morgan County's County Clerk told auditors she gave the three-member County Commission a monthly budget-to-actual report -- the tool meant to catch exactly this kind of drift -- but the Commissioners never prepared the amendments the reports should have triggered, which they called an oversight. The ARPA Fund never had a chance: the county left it out of the 2024 budget entirely because the pandemic-relief projects it would pay for hadn't been finalized when the budget was set, then spent $2,820,872 through it anyway over the course of the year.
Combined with smaller overruns in the Law Enforcement Sales Tax, Sheriff Revolving, and Prosecuting Attorney Training funds, actual spending across the four funds the audit tested came in $2,964,190 -- about 74 percent -- above the $3,991,000 those funds had been budgeted to spend, combined, in the first place. Auditors noted a similar budget-oversight lapse in the county's own separate financial-statement audit covering the two years ended December 31, 2024, meaning this wasn't a one-year slip.
View data as table
| ARPA Fund (budgeted $0) | 2,820,872 | Budgeted at zero; every dollar spent was outside the approved budget. |
|---|---|---|
| Law Enforcement Sales Tax Fund | 137,803 | Budgeted $3,979,500. |
| Sheriff Revolving Fund | 3,237 | Budgeted $10,000. |
| P.A.T. Fund | 2,278 | Budgeted $1,500. |
A raise the county calls legal, and an auditor who says the case doesn't hold up
The sheriff took office in 2021 at the salary the county's own Salary Commission had approved. The next year, under a new 2021 law, the Missouri Constitution's Article VII, Section 13 still says flatly that compensation for county officers 'shall not be increased during the term of office' -- but Morgan County raised his pay mid-term anyway, in increments that reached $37,437 by December 2024. The county's written response leans on a Cole County Circuit Court ruling from February 2022 upholding the underlying salary law's passage, and a December 2024 Missouri Attorney General letter describing the raise schedule, to argue the increases were lawful. The auditor's own rebuttal, printed in the report alongside the county's defense, says neither document does the work the county thinks it does: the circuit court case tested only whether the legislature followed the right procedure in passing the bill, never whether applying it mid-term violates the constitution's separate ban on mid-term raises -- and the audit's finding is about that application, not the law's validity.
View data as table
| Correctly phased-in statutory salary | 77,400 |
|---|---|
| What Morgan County actually paid | 89,378 |
Even setting the constitutional question aside, auditors found the county botched the math. Section 57.317.1(2), RSMo, requires raises of $10,000 or more to phase in over five years in flat 20 percent increments from the original salary -- but Morgan County reset the base each year instead, compounding the increase. Correctly phased in, the sheriff's 2024 salary should have topped out at $77,400; he was actually paid $89,378, nearly $12,000 over even the county's own preferred reading of the law. Total overpayment under that flawed formula since March 2022 runs to $22,923 -- on top of, not instead of, the constitutional violation covering the full $37,437.
Loose ends in the sheriff's cash drawer, and the county's books
The sheriff's office separately collected about $297,000 in 2024 from bonds, civil paper service, jail commissary, and board bills -- and $10,081 of commissions from pre-July-2022 sheriff's sales sat untouched in an escrow account the whole time, never turned over to the County Treasurer as state law requires. The sheriff told auditors he thought he was allowed to keep the money for office operations. Evidence handling has the same gap: personnel review seized property one shelf at a time but don't log dates or reconcile a full inventory, and the last complete count was roughly six years ago. Elsewhere in the courthouse, a November 2024 bank reconciliation for the county's special-elections account missed 25 outstanding checks worth $13,924, leaving the County Clerk's books showing $23,680 on hand when the true balance was $9,756 -- and a separate miscalculation of the county's sales-tax property-rollback left the General Revenue Fund owing the Road and Bridge Fund $256,848 for lost property-tax revenue never replaced.
The takeaway
- A budget line set at $0 became the county's single biggest overspend. Of the $2,964,190 Morgan County disbursed beyond its 2024 budget, $2,820,872 -- 95 percent -- ran through an ARPA relief fund the county never put a dollar figure on to begin with, because the projects it funded weren't finalized when the budget was set.
- The sheriff's raise fails on two separate grounds, not one. Auditors found the $37,437 in mid-term pay increases unconstitutional outright under Article VII, Section 13 -- and found that even the county's own preferred legal theory was miscalculated, overpaying the sheriff by $11,978 in 2024 alone against the phase-in formula the county says should apply.
- The county's legal defense doesn't survive the auditor's read of it. Morgan County built its case on a court ruling that tested whether a bill was properly passed, not whether applying it mid-term is constitutional, and on an Attorney General letter the auditor says ignores the exact caselaw governing when mid-term raises are allowed -- a defense addressing a different question than the one the audit raised.
The audit's testing used haphazard and judgmental sampling under generally accepted government auditing standards, so its results describe the specific items and periods reviewed rather than a statistical projection across all county transactions. Morgan County's written responses, printed in full alongside each finding, describe corrective steps already underway: a mid-year budget review starting in 2026, escrow funds turned over to the Treasurer, a Sunshine Law request log now in place, and an approved $256,848 transfer to the Road and Bridge Fund. On the sheriff's pay, the county's response says future raises will follow the constitutional and statutory provisions the auditor cited, and that the Commission will consider recoupment options for the increases already paid -- but it did not withdraw its legal position that the mid-term raises through 2024 were lawful.
Sources(3) ▾
- Missouri State Auditor's Office (Scott Fitzpatrick), Morgan County (Report No. 2026-060) (2026-07) — The full performance audit of Morgan County, Missouri government (Section 29.230, RSMo audit), scope year ended December 31, 2024, released July 2026 with an overall 'Fair' rating. Fetched directly as a PDF from auditor.mo.gov and read in full (17 pages): Citizens Summary, State Auditor's Report, all seven Management Advisory Report findings (Budget Oversight; Public Administrator's Annual Settlements; Sheriff's Compensation, including the county's written disagreement and the auditor's rebuttal comment; Sheriff's Controls and Procedures; County Clerk's Bank Reconciliations; Sales Tax Rollback; Electronic Communication Policy), and the Organization and Statistical Information appendix. Source of every dollar figure, statutory citation, and county-profile figure in this piece. auditor.mo.gov
- Missouri Revisor of Statutes, Missouri Constitution, Article VII, Section 13 -- Limitation on increase of compensation and extension of terms of office (1945-02-27) — Official text of the constitutional provision the audit's Sheriff's Compensation finding says Morgan County's mid-term salary increases violated. Fetched directly from the Missouri Revisor of Statutes and read in full; used to independently confirm the provision's exact wording rather than rely solely on the audit's paraphrase. revisor.mo.gov
- Missouri Revisor of Statutes, Section 57.317, RSMo -- Sheriffs' salary schedule, third and fourth classification counties (2021) — Official text of the 2021 statute (enacted via SB 53/SB 60) setting sheriff salaries in third- and fourth-class counties as a percentage of an associate circuit judge's pay, and the phase-in schedule requiring increases of $10,000 or more to be paid over five years in 20% annual increments. Fetched directly from the Missouri Revisor of Statutes; used to independently confirm the phase-in schedule the audit says Morgan County miscalculated. revisor.mo.gov
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
A Missouri State Auditor's Office review of Morgan County found the county's actual disbursements exceeded its budgeted disbursements by $2,964,190 in 2024 -- and 95 percent of that overrun, $2,820,872, ran through an ARPA pandemic-relief fund the County Commission had budgeted at exactly $0 and never amended. The same audit found the Commission gave the sheriff mid-term pay raises totaling $37,437 that it says violated the Missouri Constitution's ban on increasing an officeholder's pay during their term of office.