County has findings in sheriff's office timekeeping case

The findings have come back in Montezuma County’s inquiry into timekeeping at the sheriff’s office, and commissioners have not decided what to do with them.

Graphic: Cortez Current. Source: Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners meeting video, October 20, 2026

Interim County Administrator Travis Anderson told the board on Tuesday that he and staff had spent much of last week on the matter and that the county now has what he called the findings, or the determination letter. It has only that, he said, not the full file behind it.

Anderson said he had gone to a forensic auditor, who came back with several recommendations: that the issue could be more widespread and an audit could reach further than the county expects, that the state attorney general’s office be notified, and that the commissioners could consider civil action. Without the whole file, he said, the county cannot tell how far any of that would go.

The money is the sticking point. Commissioners set aside $50,000 for the work; Anderson said back-of-the-envelope arithmetic now puts it at $70,000 or $80,000, and that a forensic audit would probably take three to six months depending on how far back it reaches.

One commissioner, who said he had made the motion to set the money aside, told the board he no longer thought spending it made sense. “I don’t think we’ll be able to have any satisfaction of even seeing any results from expending that amount of money” by the end of the year, he said, so he did not think a forensic audit was feasible. He argued instead for handing the matter on — to the attorney general’s office, the district attorney, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, or the FBI if federal money is involved.

Another commissioner said he disliked where that left things. “I hate not holding people accountable for what they’ve done, but I’m not sure that we’ll hold anybody accountable because it’s not going to — we’re not going to get anything done that soon,” he said. Anderson said he would repeat something one of the commissioners has said many times: “If you lie, cheat, or steal from this county, we’re not going to let it go. We’re going to hold you accountable.”

The chairman closed the discussion without a vote. “We don’t actually have to make that decision today,” he said. “Give us some time to chew on that and we can talk about this next week.”

What has not been said

No findings, allegations or charges were described at Tuesday’s meeting. No individual was named, no amount of money was said to be owed to the county, and nobody has been accused in public of anything. Commissioners said more than once that they do not know what, if anything, is owed back until they have the full file.

The board took up the subject on September 22, when it dropped the forensic audit it had authorized in Resolution 8-2026 and voted instead to send timekeeping records to the district attorney. The commissioner who moved that said then that the county had found “some irregularities in timekeeping.” Nothing further has been described on the record since.

The meeting is posted in full on the county’s YouTube channel. Commissioners said they expect to return to the question next week; the board meets at 109 W. Main St., Cortez.