County appoints interim finance chief amid fraud investigation

Sedgwick County’s finance department has a new interim leader.

The county’s budget director, Lindsay Poe Rousseau, will become interim chief financial officer, according to a county statement released late Thursday.

County public information officer Kate Flavin said the change was effective immediately. She would not talk about the status of Chris Chronis, who was still listed as the chief financial officer on the county’s website late Thursday afternoon.

“It’s not county practice to comment on internal personnel matters,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Chronis has been the county’s chief financial officer since January 1999, according to the Government Finance Officers Association.

The county’s finance department lost $566,088.90 to fraud in October. That triggered an investigation and played a role in the push for a new outside auditing firm.

Poe Rousseau started working for Sedgwick County in 2010 as an analyst, according to her LinkedIn page. She became the budget director in 2013.

She will maintain her role as budget director for now, according to an e-mail from County Manager Michael Scholes obtained by The Eagle.

“We appreciate her willingness to serve,” Flavin said in her statement. “We want to assure all of our vendors and customers that regular business will continue as usual during this transition and that they will continue to receive customer service from the Sedgwick County Finance Department.”

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "County appoints interim finance chief amid fraud investigation."