Worcester Superior Court

This is an official Massachusetts State Auditor report about Worcester Superior Court for July 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010.

“In accordance with Chapter 11, Section 12, of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) conducted an audit of certain activities of WSC for the period July 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010.”

The audit was done to check whether the court had proper controls over money handling and to see whether old problems from a prior audit had been fixed.

“Our audit objectives were to (1) examine the adequacy of WSC’s internal controls over cash management, bail funds, and revenues and (2) follow up on problems identified during our prior audit of WSC, as detailed in our prior audit report (No. 2006-1117-3O).”

The court handled significant public money, bail money, and escrow accounts, so strong controls help protect public funds and money held for court cases.

“During the audit period, WSC collected revenues totaling $1,910,893, which it disbursed to the Commonwealth as either general or specific state revenue, as shown in the following table:”

For an ordinary resident, the main takeaway is that the audited areas of the court’s money handling appeared to be working properly during this period.

“Further, we found that WSC has taken measures to address the problems the OSA identified during its prior audit of WSC.”

The Auditor did not report new findings against Worcester Superior Court and said prior issues had been resolved.

“Our prior audit report (No. 2006-1117-3O), which covered financial and management controls over certain operations of the Worcester Division of the Superior Court Department (WSC) for the period July 1, 2004 to February 28, 2006, identified three issues, which WSC has resolved, as detailed below:”

The report does not call for new corrective action; it says the court has already implemented fixes for the earlier audit recommendations.

“Our follow-up audit determined that WSC implemented our prior audit recommendations.”

This is a clean follow-up result: the prior problems about risk planning, revenue reconciliation, and abandoned property were reported as fixed.

“Our follow-up audit determined that WSC now transfers all abandoned bail and civil escrow property to the OST in accordance with Chapter 200A.”

“Internal controls” means the court’s rules and procedures for preventing mistakes, fraud, waste, and theft when handling money and assets.

“Its internal control plan also requires it to perform periodic risk assessments and to document any areas that may be at risk from fraud, waste, and unauthorized use or theft of assets assess the level of risk and establish commensurate levels of control.”