A new audit of the Clark County Public Administrator’s Office found eight “high-risk” issues or instances of mismanagement in the troubled department that deals with people’s estates after they die if they have no next of kin.
Findings included that the department has nearly 1,900 open cases, $623,000 in collected fees it has not handed over to Clark County, an absence of a plan for disposing human cremated remains, non-deposited checks from estates long after the amount of time a bank is required to cash them, as well as lax security around people accessing the inventory collected from the homes of the deceased.
After people in Clark County die without a will or someone to take care of their belongings, their estates — which includes pets, property, vehicles and other belongings — goes to the public administrator’s office, which then figures out how to reallocate or care for their estates. The head of the office is an elected position that serves a four-year term and oversees a roughly $2.5 million annual budget with a staff of 29 part-time and full-time employees…