LAS VEGAS, Nev. A Clark County audit of the Public Administrator’s Office, the agency that takes custody of the belongings of residents who die without a will or next of kin, found $623,000 in collected fees that were never forwarded to the county, alongside thousands of vehicles, checks and sets of human remains sitting unresolved for years. The county’s audit committee finalized those findings on Oct. 28, five days before voters decide who runs the office next.
By then, Clark County’s early voting period was already more than half over. When early voting closed Friday, county data showed 220,021 ballots had been cast, and 89,077 of them, or 40.5% of the total, were cast in the first week alone, before the county’s audit committee ever discussed the final report.
What Auditors Found Inside the Office
The audit, covering January 2024 through August 2026, rated six of its eight findings “high risk.” The office’s fiscal 2027 budget runs about $2.5 million, with 29 staff split between 16 full-time and 13 part-time positions.
Three numbers from the audit: $623,000 in fees collected but never sent to the county since February 2024. 1,881 open cases as of late July, with 59% open more than two years. 147 vehicles in the office’s lot, 83% of them held more than a year.
As of late July 2026, the office had 1,881 open cases, averaging more than three years old. Fifty-nine percent had been open more than two years, 315 for more than five years and 34 for more than a decade. Of the cases the office did manage to close between January 2024 and June 2026, the average one took 552 days, about a year and a half, to resolve.
The unremitted fees traced back to February 2024, a gap of roughly 29 months by the time auditors tallied the total in July 2026, or about $21,500 a month in fees the office collected but never sent along to the county. Separately, auctions the office is supposed to run have not sent proceeds to the county since July 2021, auditors found.
Auditors also counted 147 vehicles sitting in the office’s lot as of mid-May, 83% of them held more than a year and 55% for more than three years. The office was holding 4,565 personal property items, including firearms and jewelry, averaging more than three and a half years in custody, and 289 physical checks, including one worth $42,018 and four more over $10,000 each, that mostly sat uncashed for an average of 825 days. The office also held 105 human cremains and six pet cremains, some dating to 2014, because it has no process for interring them.
Who’s Running to Replace a Scandal-Scarred Office
The office has been in turmoil since 2022, when its then-elected administrator, Robert Telles, was convicted of murdering Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German, who had been investigating Telles’ conduct in the office. Current Public Administrator Rita Reid, who took over afterward, is not seeking re-election this year. She declined to comment on the audit, but apologized to the county’s audit committee on Oct. 28, citing the department’s troubled history and staffing shortages, and agreed to let county staff supervise the office starting the next day.
Two candidates are on Tuesday’s ballot to replace her: Republican Mike Murphy, a retired police officer who served 13 years as Clark County coroner and nearly a year as interim public administrator after Telles’ removal, and Democrat Stephanie Itkin-Goodman, a deputy attorney general at the Nevada Attorney General’s Office since May 2025. Neither candidate was quoted in coverage of the finalized audit.
How the Calendar and the Audit Collided
- Oct. 17: Early voting opens in Clark County for the 2026 general election.
- Oct. 17 to Oct. 23: 89,077 ballots are cast, the period’s first full week.
- Oct. 28: The county’s audit committee meets and finalizes the Public Administrator audit; Reid apologizes and agrees to outside supervision.
- Oct. 24 to Oct. 30: A second week of early voting adds 130,944 more ballots, including a single-day peak of 29,968 on Oct. 30.
- Oct. 30: Early voting closes with 220,021 ballots cast.
- Nov. 3: Election Day, with polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
News coverage of the audit’s specific findings, the unremitted fees, the case backlog, the stored cremains, did not reach the public until the committee’s Oct. 28 meeting and the days after. By then, the first week of early voting alone accounted for 40.5% of the ballots Clark County would count by the time early voting ended two days later. Whoever wins Tuesday inherits an office that, by its own auditors’ account, has spent more than two years letting cases, checks and human remains pile up faster than it has resolved them.
