LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The State Controller's Office is seeking missing financial data from a number of special districts around the state that haven't submitted the information as required by law, with a local reclamation district that is being proposed for disbandment among them.

State Controller John Chiang said Thursday he was dispatching his audit and accounting staff to 20 special districts across the state to collect missing financial data that, by law, was required to be reported more than a year ago.

Among the districts that Chiang said haven't reported is Reclamation District No. 2070, based in Upper Lake.

Of those 20 public agencies delinquent in their reporting, the controller will audit at least three districts which have failed to comply with reporting requirements for two or more consecutive years, Chiang said.

Tom Smythe of Lake County Water Resources said Reclamation District No. 2070, which is an independent special district, was created in the mid 1920s to maintain levees and pumps in the Upper Lake Reclamation Area.

Maintenance of those levees was taken over by the state in the 1950s, Smythe said

Reclamation District No. 2070 has “become a nonfunctional entity at this point,” Smythe said.

The reclamation district was among 120 local governments that received letters from Chiang last October warning that their financial reports were overdue by more than a year and that action would be taken if the reports weren't submitted by Dec. 31.

Nine cities and 97 of the special districts that were warned subsequently filed their reports, according to Chiang's office.

Altogether, more than 5,200 local public agencies have complied with Government Code section 53891, which requires local governments to annually file with the State Controller's Office a report of financial transactions – which include figures on revenues, expenditures and long-term debt – within 90 to 110 days of the end of the fiscal year.

Chiang publishes financial reporting instructions annually on his Web site, http://www.sco.ca.gov/ .

In the case of Reclamation District No. 2070, the last report it made to the state was for the 2010-11 fiscal year, according to Jacob Roper, a spokesman for the State Controller's Office.

He said the data for 2012-13 was due last October, but the district didn't submit it.

At its Jan. 28 meeting, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider a request from Lake County Water Resources to ask the Lake County Local Agency Formation Commission to initiate proceedings to dissolve the reclamation district.

Smythe said the Lake County Watershed Protection District has been buying up property in Reclamation District No. 2070 for the Middle Creek Restoration Project area, which covers 1,650 acres of land that is meant to be restored to wetlands to improve the health of Clear Lake.

As that land purchasing process has moved forward, the reclamation district's officers have been bought out, Smythe said. As a result, the district hasn't functioned for about a year.

In one case in point, Smythe said last November escrow closed on the Watershed Protection District's purchase of property owned by John Irwin, who had been the reclamation district board president.

“So we're starting the disbandment process and it will come under the jurisdiction of the Watershed Protection District,” Smythe said.

At some point in the future, when the Middle Creek Restoration Project goes into effect, the reclamation district's remaining facilities – a flood water pumping station and diversion channel that it maintains – will no longer be needed, according to Smythe.

In the meantime, the State Controller's Office is still trying to locate the delinquent financial data from Reclamation District No. 2070, Roper said.

He said accounting staff will work to collect the data, and may be able to obtain it through the Lake County Auditor's Office, as local auditors offices often oversee funds for such districts, he said.

Roper didn't yet have a timeframe for when State Controller's staff plan to work on getting the district's records.

“We will be collecting it and making sure everyone has access to it,” Roper said.

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