County behind on accounting, or something worse?

Earlier this week, the Examiner reported that "Montgomery County's Department of Finance is having trouble completing its accounting for the last fiscal year."  You can find the article here.

The fiscal year ended on June 30, 2011. 

Let's look at some of the reasons that the county gives for the delay:

• A quarter of the finance department staff (including the finance director) left the county for private-sector jobs mid-year.  Presumably, the departing staff members gave very short notice that they'd be leaving, since new people weren't hired in time to allow a smooth transition.
• An estimated 4,400 hours of labor will be needed to complete the accounting reports. That's 550 person-workdays! 
• Software glitches are blamed for the delay, even though there are no claims of major modifications to the accounting system software in this fiscal year or any recent fiscal year.

I feel safe in saying that if a corporation delayed release of their annual financial report for the above reasons, the price of the shares of their stock would plunge even if the CEO assured the stockholders that everything was just fine.

Now I'm not claiming that the delay is due to anything other than the reasons given by the county, but at the same time, there are some very real red flags here. But in the absence of other information, we will just have to wait for the overdue accounting work to be completed.