{"id":600,"date":"2026-10-29T14:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/?p=600"},"modified":"2026-10-29T14:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:02:22","slug":"they-kept-the-ashes-for-three-and-a-half-years-and-called-it-safeguarding-clark-countys-own-auditors-say-the-elected-office-that-takes-custody-of-las-vegas-area-estates-when-nobody-else-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/?p=600","title":{"rendered":"THEY KEPT THE ASHES FOR THREE AND A HALF YEARS AND CALLED IT SAFEGUARDING | Clark County\u2019s own auditors say the elected office that takes custody of Las Vegas-area estates when nobody else can is sitting on 1,892 open cases, 105 human cremains in a warehouse because the county crypt is full, 289 undeposited checks and $623,000 in fees it stopped sending to the county in February 2024 \u2014 in an audit titled \u2018Improving Public Administration Processes to Protect and Safeguard Decedents\u2019 Property,\u2019 to which the office answered that reaching the goal \u2018is a slow process\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They kept the ashes for three and a half years and called it safeguarding. I know the sentence. It is what a government office says when the dead can\u2019t complain and the living who might have aren\u2019t on any list. There is a particular kind of public power that nobody notices because it only arrives after you are gone: no will, no next of kin, nobody willing, and the county shows up at your door with a clipboard and a key. It takes the car, the jewelry, the rifle, the laptop, the dog if there is a dog, and the box of somebody else\u2019s ashes you kept on the shelf because you loved them. Then it promises to look after all of it. I own a cardigan I intend to be buried in. I would like to know who gets the cardigan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the record. The Clark County Audit Department, in a report dated October 2026 and titled \u201cImproving Public Administration Processes to Protect and Safeguard Decedents\u2019 Property,\u201d examined the county\u2019s Public Administrator\u2019s Office \u2014 an elected, four-year office in Nevada that, the report says, \u201cmanages the estates of individuals who pass away without a qualified person willing or able to administer their estates.\u201d It has a $2.5 million budget and a staff of 29, 16 of them full time. As of July 28, 2026, it had 1,892 open cases. The Nevada Independent\u2019s Oona Milliken reports the office closed 1,808 cases during the two-year audit period at an average of 532 days each, that 59 percent of all cases have been open more than two years, 315 more than five years and 34 more than ten, and that it holds more than 147 vehicles in a lot that is almost full and more than 4,500 personal belongings, including firearms and jewelry. It is holding 289 checks, four of them for more than $10,000 and one for more than $42,000, some for years. The report counts 105 human cremains and six pet cremains as of June 4, 2026 \u2014 the ashes of other people found inside decedents\u2019 homes \u2014 63 percent of them taken in before 2024, some as early as 2014, held an average of 1,293 days, \u201cor 3.5 years.\u201d The county\u2019s designated crypt space \u201cis full.\u201d The office collected $623,000 in service fees from March 2024 through July 7, 2026, and has not sent that revenue to the county since February 2024; the report says the public administrator \u201cis the only individual who fully understands the remittance process,\u201d and that the monthly remittances stopped shortly after the office spent extensive time tracing a $59,000 fee ledger discrepancy back to a 2002 transaction. Auditors sampled 30 of 4,025 items listed as being in the vault. One, a laptop taken into custody Jan. 1, 2020, and marked for donation in November 2021, could not be found. In one case, investigators returned to a house 70 days after the first visit and found the residence \u201ccompromised\u201d and a vehicle missing. And, as the Independent quotes the audit, vault technicians \u201cwith physical inventory access, record-editing privileges, and sole auditing responsibility can easily steal items without detection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the defense, and it is the oldest one in the building. The office\u2019s written management action plan says the backlog \u201chas been impacted due to extremely limited staffing,\u201d and that reaching the goal \u201cis a slow process.\u201d On the fees, it says that once the backlogged payments are submitted, \u201cthe routine monthly process that was in place for decades prior to 2023 will be reinstated,\u201d by the end of November. A full vault audit will begin in January 2027. The Independent reports that public administrator Rita Page Reid, who declined the Independent\u2019s request for comment and is not running for re-election, apologized at Wednesday\u2019s audit committee meeting, cited the department\u2019s troubled history and a lack of staff and resources, and agreed to let county staff begin supervising the office. The history is real and it is terrible: her predecessor, Robert Telles, murdered Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German in 2022 after German investigated him. Fine. Understaffing is a reason. It is not a crypt. Staffing does not explain keeping no routine inventory of a room full of dead people\u2019s guns, or letting the one person who knows how to send the county its money simply stop. Commissioner Michael Naft, who chairs the audit committee, said it plainly: \u201cI think the hard part is you have no plan.\u201d And then the people running to fix it. Republican Mike Murphy, the interim administrator after Telles, says the audit \u201cprovided a roadmap.\u201d Democrat Stephanie Itkin-Goodman says, \u201cThe work begins on Day 1 with the county\u2019s audit as our roadmap.\u201d Both parties are the help. They have the same roadmap. Neither one of them is dead, which is the only qualification the clients have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deb has already labeled every casserole dish in her kitchen with the name of the grandchild who gets it, and now she wants to know who to call about the urn of Grandpa Lindstr\u00f6m\u2019s that has been on Buck\u2019s bookshelf since 1997. Buck says Grandpa is fine where he is. I love them. They are seasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSafeguarding\u201d is the alibi. The full crypt is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. The state took custody of things nobody could defend \u2014 a dead man\u2019s car, a dead woman\u2019s checks, the ashes of whoever those people loved \u2014 on the promise that public hands are the careful ones, and then it let the cases age like wine, the vault go uncounted and its own fees go unsent, and wrote \u201cslow process\u201d in the space where a deadline belongs. Nobody voted for that. Nobody could; the clients don\u2019t vote. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, at the next audit committee meeting: where is the laptop, when does the crypt get room, and who, by name, is counting the vault on Jan. 4, 2027, when the next administrator walks in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n