Isle of Wight County’s newly formed audit committee met for the first time on Sept. 3.

The committee is tasked with reviewing the county’s finances ahead of a fiscal 2023-24 audit, which will likely begin in October. Its members are supervisors William McCarty and Renee Rountree, business consultant Dale Baugh, former BAE Systems Business Transformation Director Mike Stanton, former Supervisor Dick Grice, Isle of Wight Chief Financial Officer Stephanie Wells and Isle of Wight County Schools CFO Liesl DeVary.

The committee unanimously elected McCarty as its chairman, Rountree as vice chairwoman and Baugh as secretary.

County Administrator Randy Keaton will serve as the committee’s staff liaison but is not a member of the committee.

Per the committee’s bylaws, which the seven members also voted unanimously to adopt, the body is empowered to, among other tasks, review fiscal policies and debt caps, oversee the full audit process, including the finances of the county and its school system, receive an annual report of all local, state and federal revenue, and review financial records for compliance with state and federal law.

The compliance review, according to McCarty, is intended to head off any repeat of a situation the county encountered nine years ago.

In 2015, Isle of Wight County had to pay out more than $4 million in back wages to workers who built Georgie D. Tyler Middle School for noncompliance with the federal Davis-Bacon Act, which, according to The Smithfield Times’ reporting from that year, requires contractors and subcontractors working under federally funded contracts to pay workers no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits. The Times reported that the School Board had accepted a $7.5 million federal bond to build the 2014-completed school, and adhere to Davis-Bacon, but did not include the Davis-Bacon provision in its 2012 construction contract.

But the committee will be solely an advisory body and won’t make policy decisions. That authority still rests with the Board of Supervisors, as does the final say over the committee’s bylaws.

Committee members, per the bylaws, serve at the pleasure of the supervisors for three-year terms and can serve a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms. Rountree has proposed staggering some of the initial appointees’ terms so that not all seats on the committee will turn over at the same time.

The group is to meet monthly on the first Monday at 4 p.m. in the county boardroom, and its meetings are to be open to the public. The bylaws specify the group is to follow Roberts’ Rules of Order for small committees.

McCarty first proposed the committee at the supervisors’ June 6 meeting, citing a January audit by the accounting firm Robertson Farmer Cox that found discrepancies in the county school system’s books. The supervisors appointed the committee’s members on Aug. 15.