Akin Water District has never submitted required financial reports to Comptroller’s Office –

FRANKLIN CO. (ECWd) –

The Akin Water District, located in Franklin County, Thompsonville, Illinois, serves a population of approximately 2205 people. According to the Illinois EPA, it has been in operation since August of 1982.

The Akin Water District Trustees are elected into office, with the most recent election held in 2019 (see it here).

When we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for records including the annual financial reports filed with the Illinois Comptroller’s Office, the response was that no such records existed.

When I contacted the Comptroller’s office about the missing reports, they were unaware Akin Water District even existed.

We informed the Comptroller’s office that the Akin Water District did exist and had not filed any of its required annual financial reports. During its Aug 12, 2019 meeting, the Water District Board discussed a request by the Comptroller on information of how it (the District) was organized (see agenda here).

Every unit of local government, school district, and special district is required to submit its annual financial report to the Illinois Comptroller.

We had a similar issue with the Clark-Edgar Rural Water District (“CERWD”) in 2012, and when presented with the requirement to submit annual financial reports to the Comptroller, the CERWD Board and their accountant tried claiming they were not a public body, but merely a “quasi-public body” (which was false). The CERWD now submits it required annual reports to the Illinois Comptroller’s office, with the first one in its history filed in 2012.

The IEPA website has an interactive map which you can click to discover which water systems are in each county (click here).

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