Sattgast seeks switch from treasurer back to auditor in November

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HURON — If voters return Rich Sattgast to the state auditor’s office in November, he plans to make moves designed to improve the speed and accuracy of its primary job, auditing vouchers, he said Monday.
State treasurer since 2010, he is running again for the auditor’s post, having served there for two terms beginning in 2002.
“The audit department is the heart of the auditor’s office,” he said at a Beadle County Republican Party campaign luncheon. “Auditing is the number one area there. It’s where we pay our vendors.
“We have 1,100 vouchers a day coming into the auditor’s office,” Sattgast said. “And you have about five employees that are doing the auditing, which means they get to spend about two and a half minutes per voucher ensuring that it is accurate, it’s accountable and it’s also timely in payment.”
Vouchers can be anything from a state employee’s paycheck to one for hundreds of thousands of dollars going to a contractor on a state job.
With recent automation, Sattgast believes he can move one employee from the reconciliation department to the audit department.
He’s also considering bringing in a second-tier auditor, someone trained in fraud who can take a second look at any vouchers that may be questionable.
“We haven’t had any issues over in the auditor’s office, but I want to ensure that we don’t have any in the future either,” Sattgast said.

In his eight years as treasurer, he said the value of unclaimed property coming into the office has gone from about $8 or $9 million a year to about $75 million. The return rate has increased from about $2 million, or 22 percent, to about $28 million, or 37 percent.
Fourteen years ago, his predecessor in the office, Vern Larson, began meeting with the state Department of Revenue – which is under the direction of the governor’s office – about streamlining the remittance center in Sioux Falls.
Larson thought it would be a way to reduce redundancy in how money is received into the state, Sattgast said.
Revenue department officials, as part of a separate agency, were reluctant to change how theY did things, he said.
When Larson left office, he passed the idea on to Sattgast.
“This last summer we did a really big, final push, and with the help of the Legislature, we convinced the Department of Revenue to change the way they work,” he said.
In December, the center will turn over a number of its duties to the private sector, meaning a reduction in state staff and lower costs for taxpayers.
Meanwhile, Sattgast said three weeks ago some issues arose with some of the higher education institutions in South Dakota.
“Some bad guys basically were trying to get into the payroll system, and it was thwarted, but that sparked a whole new area that we need to look at in fraud,” he said.
A national clearinghouse organization has been retained to work with state financial officers in state government and teach them about things being done now in fraud detection, he said.
Sattgast said he kicked off his campaign on the Fourth of July, beginning with a number of community parades celebrating the holiday around the state.
Early on, he said he has been spending a lot of time in Sioux Falls, “the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
“In order to ensure a solid win statewide, we have to ensure a win in Sioux Falls,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re leaving all the other counties out. It just means that our early push is in the Sioux Falls area.”
Running for state auditor on the Democratic ticket is Tom Cool of Sioux Falls.

PHOTO BY ROGER LARSEN/PLAINSMAN
Rich Sattgast, who is running for the auditor’s post, speaks at Monday’s GOP luncheon.