Audit motion struck down

SMITH COUNTY — The Smith County Commissioners Court striked down a motion to conduct an audit on previous road bonds in a meeting on Tuesday. According to our news partner KETK, the independent audit would examine how the county has spent millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded road bonds from 2017 to 2021. The motion came to the court after a watchdog group raised concerns about a possible $7 million discrepancy, rising project costs and delays.

Ultimately, the court rejected the motion by a majority vote. Precinct 1 Commissioner Christina Drewry was the sole vote in favor of the audit.

“This is about not repeating the same mistakes,” Drewry said. “We didn’t do a great job of capturing all of the documents, the inspections, the engineering. There are documents that are missing. We shouldn’t have that. The road bond was $84 million.”