BOZEMAN - Gallatin County has been under increasing scrutiny after a local business owner published a report about the County’s inability to properly manage its finances.
That report was researched and written by lifelong Gallatin County resident Joshua Tuininga, who owns and operates Door Panel Systems, a company specializing in custom interior and exterior doors.
Tuininga became interested in the County finances after learning that the County had not posted audits for 2023, 2024, and 2025.
“I went on the website and looked for the audits, and they were not there,” said Tuininga. So, he said he decided to dig deeper, started searching keywords, audits, minutes; "I just kept looking, kept pulling documents...”
Tuininga read through audits from 2011-2022 and sifted through Gallatin County Commission meeting minutes. After about six weeks, Tuininga compiled his lengthy, seventy-plus-page report titled "Gallatin County Has Been Unable To Reconcile Its Cash For Eight Consecutive Years" and posted a summary of the report to X.
“Reconciling the books is the basis to know everything; you don’t know what’s true unless you reconcile your books,” said Tuininga.
Tuininga's research shows that Gallatin County blamed new software and later its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the problems, the same CFO responsible for the Big Sky tax miscalculation that caused Big Sky taxpayers to overpay $8.3 million over four years. That CFO has since resigned and now works for the City of Bozeman.
Tuininga said, “I think this problem is too big to be a single person.”
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Tuininga points to the 2019 audit where the County received a “Disclaimer of Opinion,” the same designation given to the 2023 audit finally posted to the County website a couple of weeks ago. The “Disclaimer of Opinion” means the external auditor refuses to express an opinion on financial statements because they could not gather enough evidence to make a judgment.
The 2023 audit identified eight system failures, including inability to reconcile cash and investments and incomplete reporting of federal grants. According to the audit, the County is in danger of its bond rating dropping and losing state funding and federal grants.
Tuininga believes what he discovered is “an accounting catastrophe,” and “the buck stops with elected officials.”
Zach Brown is one of those elected officials – elected to the County Commission in 2020.
"We are not happy with where we are at, but we are heading in the right direction,” said Brown during a recent interview with MTN. Brown said he blames the financial problems on complicated financial systems, including special districts, along with system failures, lack of oversight, and “part of it, County governments across the state struggle with this problem; we’re not unique.”
After making a public records request, the County provided three letters from the Montana Department of Administration (DOA) warning that the County could lose its state funding if it did not get its finances in order by February 2026. A letter from DOA dated March 16, 2026, extended the deadline and states, “The state’s warning of intent to withhold financial assistance will be lifted when: The County demonstrates consistency in completing cash reconciliations without unexplained differences for May and June 2026, submitted by the 15th of each subsequent month.”
When asked about the DOA letters, Brown responded, “We’ve been putting a ton of time and effort and coordinated communication in the last 6 months. Our impression is that they are pleased with our progress and supportive of reforms we are implementing.”
Brown explained that those reforms include improving processes, setting deadlines for monthly cash reconciliation, and investments in staff and training.
Brown said the new County CFO Aaron Mitchell, who was hired earlier this year, recently discovered a mistake when approximately $530,000 was entered twice in the financial system and that similar discoveries are happening all the time as the County works to get back on track.
“At the end of the day, we are committed to being transparent and accountable... we’re excited to share the good news about where things are headed. I think we are really optimistic; the energy in this building is positive with the reforms that we are putting into place with our financial systems,” said Brown.
According to Brown, the goal is for the County audits to be up to date by the end of 2027.
