Vero Beach city hall had cause to celebrate last week.
For the first time since the retirement of former finance director Cindy Lawson three years ago, the City of Vero Beach met the Florida Auditor General’s June financial reporting deadlines, submitting an audit of its 2024-25 fiscal year on time.
According to Councilman Aaron Vos, who has tracked the audit process closely, the auditor’s report was received by the city from accounting firm Cherry Bekaert on June 29 and sent to the state the next day.
“On June 30, Finance Director Lisa Burnham submitted all required documentation to the State of Florida, completing the city’s Fiscal Year 2025 independent financial audit by the required deadline,” Vos said on Monday.
Vice Mayor Taylor Dingle, who along with Councilman John Carroll has pushed for the city to resume regular quarterly financial reporting to better inform management and spending decisions, said last week the city has received confirmation that the audit was delivered.
Overall, the city got a pretty clean audit but was marked down for “material weaknesses identified” in internal financial controls, resulting in a note in the audit report: “In the current fiscal year, the City’s management identified approximately $3.7 million of fiscal 2024 capital expenditures that were improperly expensed as of September 30, 2024. To correct this error, the opening net position of the water and sewer fund and the business-type activities were restated as of October 1, 2024,” the note reads.
In response, Burnham wrote: “Management acknowledges the condition noted above and agrees with the auditor’s assessment that our new team members were not familiar with our closing procedures during the 2024 fiscal year close. However, as of September 30, 2025, we believe this condition has been remediated as our finance and accounting team has had to become proficient in their roles and are continually reviewing and making improvements to our processes and controls, including the year-end close.”
Auditors said the city staff complied with all government investment policies.
The city operates on a different fiscal year than the State of Florida’s July 1 to June 30 schedule, with the city’s budgetary calendar running from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30. After the year closes on Sept. 30, the finance staff and auditors have nine months to complete and submit an audit by June 30 of the following year.
Vero Beach got off to a late start. The city did not hire auditors Cherry Bekaert for the 2024-25 audit until April 2, putting the staff under immense pressure to meet the June 30 deadline.
Up until 2024, Vero had for decades received awards for its financial reporting. The city has had only five finance directors – Tom Nason, Steve Maillet, Cindy Lawson, Steve Dionne and Lisa Burnham – in its 106-year history.
Lawson, who had steered city finances for a dozen years, filed the 2021-22 audit and financial statements the day before she retired in April 2023. That summer, Finance Director Steve Dionne was hired, having served in a top finance position at the Palm Beach County Health Department.
When the June 30, 2024, deadline rolled around and Dionne’s first city audit was due, staff was still many months from completing that work.
In October 2024, a warning letter from the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee was sent to Mayor John Cotugno. When the state did not receive a response from City Manager Monte Falls or Dionne, Vero Beach was placed on a take-action list by the state auditing committee in February 2025.
Dionne was forced out that same month and Burnham, a retired municipal accountant from Michigan who had been on the job one month, took over as interim finance director, heading up the audit effort.
Vero lost one month of optional sales tax funding in 2025 due to enforcement measures for not complying with state financial reporting regulations, but that was covered by the city’s errors and omissions insurance policy. The audit due in June 2024 was finally completed in 2025. Then the next year’s audit was filed nearly five months late in November 2025.
Most local governments complete and review their audits in March or early April, because the deadline to submit financial reports to receive state revenue sharing for police and fire pensions is March 15.
If the audited financials are submitted too late to the Florida Department of Management Services, it can cause delays in receiving millions of dollars needed to offset local taxpayer liability for police and fire pensions. Vero ran into trouble with late pension payments for two years during its audit struggles, costing city taxpayers more than $100,000 in interest not paid to its Police Pension Fund.
Vero should receive its share of the state-collected pension funding on time this fall, since the financial report was submitted on time.
