Clark County audit flags eight high-risk findings in public administrator's office

Nearly 1,900 cases remain open amid fee, security and cremains concerns

The audit covering 2024 through 2026 identified eight “high-risk” issues or instances of mismanagement at the Clark County Public Administrator’s Office. The office receives estates when people die without a will or a next of kin to take care of their belongings, then determines how to reallocate or care for those estates. Those estates can include pets, property, vehicles and other belongings. The elected administrator serves a four-year term and oversees a roughly $2.5 million annual budget and a staff of 29 part-time and full-time employees.

The findings included nearly 1,900 open cases, $623,000 in collected fees not handed over to Clark County, an absence of a plan for disposing human cremated remains, non-deposited checks from estates and lax security around people accessing the inventory collected from the homes of the deceased. Auditors said they had asked the office for an action plan to address the findings but had not heard back as of Oct. 22. The audit was set to be finalized during a county audit committee meeting Wednesday. Current Public Administrator Rita Page Reid, who declined The Nevada Independent’s request for comment, is not running for re-election.

During the two-year audit period, the office closed 1,808 cases, averaging 532 days per case. The audit said 59% of all cases had been open for more than two years. Among cases still open, most had been open for more than three years; 315 had been open for more than five years, and 34 for more than 10 years. The audit’s authors recommended a two-year timeline for administrator cases.

Auditors said the longer a case is open, the more time, money and resources it demands. Belongings sit in storage, “contributing to overcrowded storage areas, increasing the risk of depreciation and requiring additional staff time to manage the inventory,” according to the audit. Longer cases also make attorneys, heirs, creditors and other financial institutions harder to contact and complicate the processing of payments on old bank accounts. The audit also described high staff turnover and instances of security lapses that went unnoticed.

The office held more than 147 vehicles, several for three years or longer, in a parking lot that was almost full. It also had more than 4,500 personal property items in its possession, including high-value items such as firearms and jewelry. The audit said unauthorized access to these stored belongings had occurred.

The office had 289 checks in its possession, four for more than $10,000 each and one for more than $42,000. Several had been in the office’s possession for years without being deposited, forwarded to a next of kin or otherwise disposed of, long after the amount of time a bank is required to cash them.

The inventory also included 105 human cremains — cremated remains — and six pet cremains. More than half were at least three years old, and six were more than a decade old. Auditors found no plan for disposing human cremated remains. The county’s crypt, where the remains are kept, was full, meaning additional cremains could not be properly disposed of and some cases had to remain open.

The office collected $623,000 in fee revenue during the two-year audit period but did not send it to Clark County, which it had previously been doing before stopping in February 2024. In the audit, the county said processing fees are necessary for the office’s budget but did not say why the office had stopped forwarding them.

The audit also found that the office regularly failed to conduct timely visits to a decedent’s home after an initial visit. Those delays sometimes meant property — in one case, a car — had gone missing or been “compromised.”

Several people without proper authorization accessed areas where belongings of deceased people were kept, including someone who was not Clark County staff. The audit also outlined a lack of security oversight for vault technicians, who could modify the records of stored items without supervisor approval or oversight. Auditors warned that vault technicians “with physical inventory access, record-editing privileges, and sole auditing responsibility can easily steal items without detection.”

Former Public Administrator Robert Telles murdered Las Vegas Review-Journal journalist Jeff German in 2022 after German investigated Telles’ conduct. Telles served as public administrator for two years. During his trial for German’s murder, Telles confirmed an affair with a subordinate that he had originally denied.

Republican Mike Murphy, the interim administrator during Telles’ final months in office and after his arrest, is running for the office against Stephanie Itkin-Goodman, a deputy attorney general and Democrat. Murphy is the county coroner, a position he has held for 14 years.

Murphy said many of the office’s problems date back to Telles’ leadership and to German’s reporting that Telles created emotional stress in the office through bullying and favoritism. “Certainly, half of the time was spent with Robert at the helm,” Murphy said of his time in the office. He said he was brought aboard in May 2022 to address some of the allegations uncovered in German’s article while Telles was still in office, and stayed on after German’s murder in September 2022 to deal with the aftermath, though he was not afforded the same power as a standard public administrator. Murphy said he was aware of some of the issues raised by the audit during his 11-month stint as interim administrator but did not have the authority to address them at the time.

Both candidates said in separate interviews they were concerned with the findings. “I think it has provided a roadmap for the next public administrator to come in and take it to the next level, and to follow the guidelines of the audit,” Murphy said. Itkin-Goodman said, “My opponent was brought in to help manage those long-standing problems.” She added, “His promise to finish what they started is precisely why this office needs independent leadership and fundamental reform, which is what I bring.”

The candidates also expressed concern about unauthorized people, including someone who was not Clark County staff, gaining access to the inventory of deceased individuals. To address the issue, Murphy suggested requiring body cameras, while Itkin-Goodman called the lack of safety a “failure.” “The work begins on Day 1 with the county’s audit as our roadmap,” Itkin-Goodman said, adding, “Immediate safeguards and a corrective action plan, with clear deadlines.”