The assets of elderly and disabled people under the care of the County of Ventura are safer than they once were, but further reforms are needed in the Public Guardian's Office, according to a report to be presented today to the Board of Supervisors.

The report commissioned by the board and conducted by the accounting and consulting firm Thompson, Cobb, Bazilio & Associates is the latest effort to find out why employees of the Public Guardian's Office were able to steal from their clients, and how to prevent a repeat of the scandal.

The office manages the assets of elderly and mentally ill people if their families can't or won't do it. One former employee has been convicted of stealing from clients, and two others pleaded not guilty to similar charges.

The report concludes that the Public Guardian's Office has made "significant progress toward establishing effective internal controls."

However, it says "further improvements" are needed, such as installing a new software system that would make it easier to track clients' assets, and hiring a full-time accountant to keep an eye on the office's books.

"There's still work to be done and improvements to be made," Supervisor Kathy Long said Monday. "The bottom line is, we have to do absolutely everything we can to protect these folks that are so vulnerable."

Larry Matheney, who is the county's elected public administrator, public guardian, treasurer and tax collector, said the report shows "a real success story."

"It's gratifying to see an outside company come in and say we've made significant progress in so many areas," he said.

Some security improvements made

Matheney said he takes "full responsibility" for the failure of his office to prevent theft and embezzlement. Since the thefts were discovered two years ago, he has instituted reforms, such as keeping the keys to clients' property locked away and arranging for checks to be directly deposited into the clients' accounts.

"Before the wheels came off, two years ago, it's like we left the door unlocked every day, and then we didn't go in to see if anything had been taken while we were out," Matheney said.

If someone were to try to steal from a client now, "the system is in place to catch it and stop it quickly," Matheney said.

The report sets a six-month timetable to finish reforming the office's management. By October, new oversight procedures should be put in writing and followed more strictly.

"Now that we have this, we have something we can very clearly measure performance against," Supervisor Steve Bennett said. "An independent, outside management audit report like this gives us some real clear, concrete measurements."

Although the general tone is positive, the report lists some ways in which the Public Administrator and Public Guardian's Office could operate more securely and efficiently. For example, caseworkers and their supervisor do not have the fiscal expertise necessary to "effectively account for and manage client funds and assets."

Critique may aid Matheney's case

The software that the office uses to track clients' assets and income is also horribly out of date. The program is based on the MS-DOS platform, the standard PC operating system of the 1980s. Data must be entered manually and re-entered many times, and the system's ability to produce reliable reports is "very limited and unreliable," the report states.

Matheney said he wants to fix both of those problems, but he'll need money to do it. He plans to ask the Board of Supervisors for an extra $60,000 to $80,000 in the 2007-08 budget to pay for a new software system, and an as-yet-undetermined amount to hire an accountant who would split time between the Tax Collector's Office and Public Guardian's Office.

Bennett said he'll reserve judgment on the budget requests until next month, when the Board of Supervisors looks at the entire county budget.

"The things that require more money, we'll have to wait and see," he said. "Most of this is not something that requires more money; it requires doing more things."

Jere Robings, a county government watchdog and former executive director of the Ventura County Taxpayers Association, said the board "will be hard-pressed to deny him that money."

"I think Larry Matheney is going to come out of this looking fine," Robings said. "The problems have been identified and they're being taken care of, at least according to these reports."