Vero leaders eager to end further media reporting on – and taxpayer discovery – of the fallout from the city’s systematic financial reporting failures of 2024 must now face the challenge of dealing with yet another missed filing deadline.
The unmet March 15 deadline for Vero’s 2024 Police Pension Plan Annual Report is the latest ripple effect from the city filing its 2022-23 audited financials 10 months late.
Each year the city staff and police pension plan administrator work together to file a detailed annual accounting of pension funds with the Florida Department of Management Services (DMS) as is required by Florida Statutes.
Each October that the plan is in compliance, the state releases Vero’s portion of state-collected tax revenue. This state revenue reduces what Vero taxpayers must contribute to the police pension plan.
In 2024, Vero’s 2023 pension fund report was not filed by the March 15 deadline – in part because a copy of the city’s uncompleted Comprehensive Audited Financial Report (CAFR) was also required to complete the filing.
It was not until two weeks ago, on May 7, that state officials acknowledged in writing that Vero had finally filed its 2022-23 audit and financial statements.
As a result of these missed deadlines, the state did not send Vero its portion of state-collected taxes for the pension fund last fall.
Vero also has a fire pension fund covering some of the employees of the city’s fire department prior to its consolidation with Indian River County Fire-Rescue. Funds for the fire pension plan retirees were also held back.
On March 18, DMS Communications Director Dan Barrow confirmed that $319,088.92 in state funding was being held back from Vero’s police pension fund and $371,475.84 was being held back from Vero’s fire pension fund.
The reports due March 15, 2024 have now been filed more than one year late, and the 2023 Police Pension Plan Annual Report was approved by state officials on Monday, but as of press time the release of state pension funds for the police was still pending.
The annual pension plan report can span hundreds of pages and, after filing, require months of examination and clarification with Department of Management Services staff before being stamped approved.
For example, the Town of Indian River Shores’ 106-page annual pension plan report for 2023, filed on time in spring 2024, was not approved until June 28, 2024, and the Shores has roughly half as many covered by its pension plan as Vero.
Meanwhile, Vero also neglected to deposit the city’s portion of the pension contribution to the Police Pension Fund for two years, costing Vero taxpayers nearly $130,000 in interest in late April when the city finally wired more than $2 million into the fund.
State funding to reduce Vero taxpayers’ portion of the Police Pension Fund also would normally be released in October, but could be delayed as a result of that 2024 report – due March 15 of this year – not being completed, filed and approved on time.
According to a May 15 email from Police Pension Plan Administrator Siera Feketa with the firm Foster & Foster, the “2023 report hasn’t been approved yet. Once it’s approved, we will begin the 2024 report.”
City staff has supplied employee salary data to Foster & Foster, but “we will still need the FYE2024 audit to complete the submission to the State,” Faketa said in a May 13 email to Vero Beach 32963.
Questions posed to City Manager Monte Falls and Finance Director Lisa Burnham by email on May 5 about the status of the annual reports for the police and fire pension plans remained unanswered as of press time.
In response to a May 5 public records request for a copy of the 2024 police and fire pension annual reports which were due to the state on March 15, Heather McCarty of the city clerk’s office said in a May 9 email, “There are no records responsive to this request.”
Implications of this new, missed March 15 deadline for the 2024 report and the in-progress 2023-24 audit were set to be discussed Wednesday (May 21) at the city’s quarterly Police Pension Board meeting.
But rather than stepping up to any fault for these problems, on May 13 City Manager Monte Falls publicly called out Vero Beach 32963. “Since Feb. 28, local press outlet 32963 has published 14 different stories related to our audit. They have picked a target, pushed a narrative, and kept the pressure on,” Falls told the City Council.
The “narrative,” driven by exhaustive reporting and supported by the public record, is that the city’s problems were entirely preventable had Falls more attentively managed a new finance director who had become a problem employee.
Vero Beach 32963 has indeed “kept the pressure on” Falls and on Mayor John Cotugno to accept their fair share of the blame for what happened. Thus far, only ousted finance director Steven Dionne has been held accountable.
Cotugno’s culpability stems from the fact that an Oct. 29, 2024, letter from the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee notifying the city it was out of compliance with state law was also addressed directly to Cotugno.
Cotugno did not respond to that letter, or share the letter with the Vero Beach City Council and the public.
No city official responded to the copy of the letter sent to Falls, either, forcing a JLAC vote in Tallahassee on Feb. 10 to take enforcement action against the City of Vero Beach for failure to file its 2022-23 audit and financial statements.
Instead of acknowledging his own failing, Cotugno also has mostly addressed the city’s audit woes by blaming the media.
