Editorial: Auditor’s Office tools provide view into government

Published 1:30 am Saturday, August 9, 2025

By The Herald Editorial Board

Transparency is key to good government, and it’s the reason that each state has an auditor’s office to ensure that local governments are following the laws and rules of financial accountability.

But the intent of that transparency — trust that governments are providing the services expected and using taxpayer funds responsibly — requires that we look through the window into government operations that auditors provide.

Most of us only hear of the work of the Washington State Auditor’s Office through news reports when a local government, such as a city or school district has received a finding following a regular audit, typically a warning that certain procedures haven’t been followed with direction to correct the problem so an oversight doesn’t become a weakness that can allow fraud and embezzlement.

Last fiscal year, among the 2,724 audits completed by the state Auditor’s Office, it launched 90 deeper investigations that found 21 instances of fraud, identifying more than a half-million dollars in misappropriated funds, another $112,000 in questionable transactions and another $80,000 in other losses. A few years back, the office, during a regularly scheduled audit uncovered the misappropriation of nearly $7 million by the former finance director of the housing authority in Pierce County, who used lax internal controls to hide fraudulent transactions.

Most of us are content to let the auditor’s office watchdogs do their work, but at a time when public confidence in government at all levels is struggling, state Auditor Pat McCarthy is hoping to encourage people to see for themselves the transparency her office provides.

“We need to do a better job of telling the public what we in the accountability world do,” said McCarthy, now in her third term, during a discussion with the editorial board this week that included herself and others with the office.

For several years now, her office has offered a more accessible view into the work it does through its website’s Financial Intelligence Tool, which allows anyone to explore and compare profiles, past audits and the financial health for every city, county, school district, fire district and more — totaling more than 1,800 local government agencies — showing revenues, expenditures, trends and rankings compared against similar districts.

Here’s how a school board member, for example, might use FIT to get a better understanding of their school district, in particular related to concerns about a potential loss of federal funding with uncertainty over the U.S. Department of Education.

“This unpredictability, this instability that’s going on with what’s coming out of D.C. is really challenging for government,” McCarthy said. “Government needs predictability to function. Well, you need to know what your dollars are. You need to know what to do to if you’re applying for a federal grant, you need to know what the rules are. The reduction of force at the federal level does have an impact on every state.”

More generally, a parent can compare a child’s school district against a neighboring school district.

“I’m going to compare it with a school district next door, and do some comparison and see, well, what are their revenues, and what are their expenditures, and what do we see with their financial health?” McCarthy said. “I think they’re great tools.”

In addition to that window into local governments, the office — with access through the website — provides performance audits of state agencies and operations; a review of law enforcement investigations into the use of deadly force; evaluation of utilities’ compliance with the state’s clean energy and energy independence goals; and cybersecurity audits of state agencies and local governments, with training and tips of use for personal cybersecurity, which recently won the office an award from the National State Auditors Association for its ease of use.

“It’s really a check list for local governments and state agencies, because everyone needs to be a participant in making sure that they’re cyber smart to avoid hacking and ransomware,” she said, because those phishing and other attacks are made against all employees. “It’s not just for IT people.”

“We know that a lot of our small clients may not even have a formal IT department,” added Janel Roper, McCarthy’s chief of staff. “By doing this, it really gets to the basics of, what kind of policies should you have in place? How could you set up so that you can be less likely to happen?”

McCarthy, who is serving as president this year of the national auditor’s association, is spreading that gospel of transparency and pointing to office’s respect among state lawmakers, who use its information to inform their legislation and decisions. The office will soon post to the website a white paper that outlines the work of the “accountability community” across the state, she said, that she will share with other states’ auditors.

“I’ll be asking our executive committee to create a task force for an educational, informational outreach so that we can tell our story, state by state to our congressional delegations,” she said, passing along that transparency to Congress to inform its decisions, especially as it considers the needs of programs, in particular Medicare and Medicaid, programs that share state and federal responsibilities.

She has her own work to do on that task, she admitted, specifically wanting to reach out to the congressional representatives in Eastern Washington, Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-4th District; and Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-5th District.

People are hungry for transparency and good government. The accountability community, McCarthy said, has a key role in helping provide that.

“Maybe we can start to really be able to help these folks who are making the decisions,” she said. “You don’t need to create a DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). There are a lot of really good people in the accountability world who do this work.”