Members of the Board JAMES P. GOODRICH, Governor. OTTO L. KLAUSS, Auditor of State. GILBERT H. HENDREN, State Examiner. Office Staff GILBERT H. HENDREN, State Examiner. DUTIES AND FUNCTIONS The State Board of Accounts was established in 1909. The board consists of the Governor and the Auditor of State, who are members exofficio, and a state examiner, appointed by the Governor for a term of four years. The chief executive officer of the State Board of Accounts is the state examiner, who is assisted in the administrative work of the office by two deputy examiners, a law clerk and a corps of field examiners. The duties of the State Board of Accounts are to prescribe and install a uniform system of accounting and reporting for all public offices and institutions which will exhibit in clear, succinct and understandable form all receipts and expenditures of public money, the use and disposition of public property, and the sources of all public revenue; to determine the validity of all financial transactions involving public money; to formulate all statements and reports required for the internal administration of any public office; to conduct periodical examinations of the financial operations of every state, county, township, city and town office, as well as all public service industries, such as municipal light and water plants; to recover all public money unlawfully obtained by any public official by fraud, delinquency, negligence, peculation, ignorance or misunderstanding; and to guide and assist public officials in the discharge of the duties of their respective offices by the promulgation of administrative orders, rulings and regulations and the construction and interpretation of the statutes under which they are required to operate. UNIFORM ACCOUNTING In compliance with the provisions of the public accounting law, the State Board of Accounts has developed, prescribed and installed a uniform and simplified system of bookkeeping and accounting for each of the 6,522 public offices and state institutions of Indiana. Under this system, less * Mr. Crane resigned January, 1918, and was succeeded by Willard B. Gem mill. time is required than formerly to keep public records. To illustrate: In an average county it formerly required about three weeks of the county auditor's time to complete the semi-annual tax settlement report. With the new records and by the new methods, the county auditor can perform this work in about three days. This is a saving of at least five weeks annually for each of the ninety-two county auditors. A similar saving, in large measure, is made in other public offices. FIELD EXAMINERS The work of examining and investigating public offices and installing public records is assigned to field examiners who are appointed by the State Examiner. All candidates for the position of field examiner are required to pass an open, competitive examination, are selected on account of their fitness and ability and are assigned to duty in pairs, representing opposite political parties. Examiners of exceptional ability, who have had extensive experience as members of the force of field examiners, are assigned to duty as examiners of state offices, state institutions, the largest municipal light and water plants and the largest cities and counties of the State. At the close of each examination, the field examiners confer with the officer whose records have been examined and verify each item of error charged against him; if the officer's explanation is satisfactory, credit is given for all items satisfactorily explained and the officer may then pay the amount of the remaining errors to the proper authority and be given proper credit. Approximately 85% of all errors and irregularities have been settled with delinquent officials in this manner by the field examiners. The discrepancies disclosed in public records by the field examiners are largely due to mistakes and misinterpretation of the law, and public officers generally have displayed a spirit of willingness and frankness in the adjustment of discrepancies. PUBLICATIONS To aid and assist the field examiners and public officials in the uniform administration of the laws coming within the purview of the accounting law, the following books and pamphlets have been prepared and published during the last three years by the State Board of Accounts: Fees and Salaries. Fees and Salaries to be Retained by Officials Only. Uniform Method of Examination for Field Examiners. Price List Guide. Laws Concerning County Commissioners. Laws Concerning Township Trustees. Budget Analysis Pamphlet and Budget System for Municipalities, Counties and Townships. Procedure for Letting Legal Bridge Contracts. Book on Public Contracts and Heating and Ventilating. Public Buildings. County Surveyors' and Engineers' Laws. Laws and Procedure as to Legal Notices and Fees and Legal Measure ments. LEGAL OPINIONS One of the important duties of the State Board of Accounts is to construe and interpret the statutes under which public officials are required to operate and with which they are obliged to conform. This branch of the work is entrusted to a legal advisor, who is in reality a deputy of the Attorney-General, assigned as a legal specialist in the construction and interpretation of the laws over which the State Board of Accounts has administrative authority. All legal opinions of the board which have been issued during the past eight years are being analyzed and when all duplications have been eliminated, they will be published in book form for the use of the department, the field examiners and public officials of the state generally. AUTHORITY OF THE BOARD The Board of Accounts does not confine its activities exclusively to the auditing of the accounts of public officers and the recovery of public funds which are knowingly or unwittingly misappropriated. A mere audit of public accounts will give no idea of the range or magnitude of the irregularities and malpractices which have obtained throughout the State in awarding public contracts, disbursing public money and carrying on public work. The official acts of the department have been based on the theory, amply sustained by the express provisions of the accounting law, that everything should be done which will aid public officials in preventing the waste of public funds and guarantee value received for each dollar of public money expended. The operation of the department in the discharge of these ancillary public functions has yielded the most beneficent results Among the more conspicuous and flagrant abuses which the Board of Accounts has investigated and practically eliminated are the sale of "short weight" furnaces and bridges, vending of teachers' contracts, malpractices in the construction and repair of free gravel roads, and the practice of charging different prices for the same articles when sold under substantially identical conditions. MANUFACTURING COSTS Certain commodities are manufactured on state account in the public institutions of the State, and the value of the material and supplies passing through the storerooms of the various state institutions amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. The necessity for installing a system to safeguard the receipt and disbursement of these stores, and to determine the elements of cost in the manufacture of articles is obvious. Accordingly the department has gone very carefully into the matter of costs, with the result that the actual cost of the manufactured articles is known to a certainty. Records have been so prepared as to permit of the assembling of all the elements of cost, such as that of raw materials, of carriage inward on purchases, of various manufacturing and selling costs, of hand tools and of fixed charges embracing light, power, heat. depreciation, rent, insurance, etc. Moreover, an accounting and |