Wakulla County Building Department Audit: Sloppy Permit Practices Overcharge Residents, Shortchange the State

Wakulla County taxpayers, here’s your FYI on a new Internal Audit (IA) report exposing sloppy practices in the Building Department’s permit process, costing residents ~$12,670 in overcharges, owing the state ~$16,750, and missing required public reports. The Internal Auditor deserves praise for catching these bookkeeping blunders—they’re just doing their job—but the Clerk’s Office Finance Department and Building Department need to clean up their act to stop these careless errors from hitting our wallets. Let’s dive into the audit.

Permits Processed, But Surcharges Botched

The IA reviewed the Building Department’s financial and operational processes for issuing permits (not inspections), focusing on ~2,300 permits in Fiscal Year 2022-2023 ($745,000 revenue) and ~2,200 through July of FY 2023-2024 ($729,000). They sampled 20 permits, including three using private providers (allowed under Florida Statute 553.791), and found all had correct permit fees per the 2013 fee schedule (Resolution 13-61). Private provider permits had proper documentation, though not all paperwork is on Citizenserve, the public portal, and providers underuse electronic uploading, complicating tracking for Building’s stretched-thin staff.

The trouble starts with surcharges, required by Florida Statutes 468.631 (1.5% for the Building Code Administrators and Inspectors Fund, minimum $2) and 553.721 (1% for the Department of Business and Professional Regulation [DBPR], minimum $2). Building keeps 10% of these for code-related education, and Finance pays DBPR quarterly based on Building’s reports. But IA found errors in six of 14 quarterly reports from January 2021 to June 2024, with wrong spreadsheet cells causing underpayments or overpayments (e.g., one quarter used four months’ data). This left ~$16,750 owed to DBPR, which Building and Finance must resolve.

More alarming, Building has overcharged the 1% DBPR surcharge since July 2017, using 1.5% due to an outdated system setting. For permits above the $2 minimum, this overcharged ~$12,670 from January 2021 to June 2024, including ~$30 across 12 sampled permits. Small repairs saw minor overcharges, but new construction took a hit. IA suggests legal counsel on refunds (for amounts over $10, per Revenue Collections’ policy) or transferring overages to revenue, as Finance did in FY 22-23. So, do they just plan to keep it rather than refund?

Accounting Errors Pile Up

In MIP, the county’s accounting software, Building’s deposit sheets had values on wrong lines, leading Finance to misrecord permit and surcharge revenue. Building’s permit-tracking spreadsheet had typos—e.g., $35,395 instead of $35.95 in April 2023, or $4,132 instead of $41.32 in August 2022—skewing totals. These columns aren’t used for DBPR reports but should be cross-checked. Finance also botched a FY 22-23 year-end journal entry, moving $14,787.13 from the surcharge account (208030) to Building’s 10% account (341801) when ~$2,200 was correct, missing a red flag. The audit also found missing public reports. Florida Statute 553.80 requires a building utilization report on the county website by December 31, 2020, but it’s not there.

Careless, Not Catastrophic

These aren’t earth-shattering sums, but they add up—$12,670 taken from residents, $16,750 owed to the state, and public reports AWOL. Building and Finance staff are overworked and underpaid, but basic errors like wrong spreadsheet cells, outdated surcharge rates, and unchecked journal entries fall on department leaders. The Internal Auditor’s work highlights where processes are failing, but Finance and Building need to fix them.

Why It Matters

This sloppiness hits taxpayers directly—overcharged permits raise costs for homeowners and contractors, underpaid state fees could bring penalties, and missing reports hide how our money’s used. With thousands of permits processed yearly, these errors aren’t one-offs; they’re systemic. The more you know...................