The Orleans Parish district attorney's books showed a surplus of nearly $1 million for 2006, but that is wrong -- and not just because the total didn't include more than $3 million owed from a racial discrimination lawsuit, auditors say.

The office, which is still operating out of temporary headquarters, hadn't adjusted the value of vehicles, furniture and equipment flooded by Hurricane Katrina -- one of seven problems listed in the audit by Luther C. Speight & Co.

At least one dated to before the storm hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Ajusting and closing entries for the previous year hadn't been posted to the general ledger for at least three years, said the report.

The cover showed a Dec. 19 release date; the Legislative Auditor's Office sent out notices about it on Wednesday.

The district attorney's office has hired a consulting accounting firm and is taking other measures to fix the problems, some of which were due to Hurricane Katrina, according to an unsigned response released as part of the audit report.

Speight did not say the books were cooked, just badly kept.

The district attorney's office, which uses calendar years for accounting, has until June to submit its 2007 audit.

Eddie Jordan was district attorney until October, when he resigned under pressure after losing appeals of the discrimination lawsuit.

Although the judgement wasn't mentioned in the records audited, the books did include $600,000 in defense attorneys' fees.

Jordan's office listed its fixed assets for 2006 at just over $2 million, and the value of its vehicles at nearly $1.2 million, without any adjustment for storm damage or related depreciation expense, the audit said.

It said that in addition to not including previous years' adjusting and closing entries, the books for 2006 had "other unreconciled differences," making it impossible to tell whether a "fund balance adjustment" of nearly $1.5 million was correct.

Other problems included:

--Lack of records to back up more than $900,000 in grants.

--The office didn't compare its approved budget to its actual performance. Since it didn't include a copy of the budget, auditors couldn't do that, either.

--The accounting staff did not properly record transfers from grant funds to general funds, and a total of $67,500 in such transfers weren't balanced.

--Workers assigned to programs paid for by grants didn't record time spent on them.

The response said the office was working on each of the problems.

It said personnel losses from Katrina, the amount of damage to the flooded offices, and "the fact that most of the personnel resources of the office since Katrina have been devoted to servicing the prosecution function" delayed work on the asset inventory. It said the office was getting software to work on that.

The consulting accounting firm helped with that and was training staff in proper use of its other accounting software, the response said.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)