Shoddy financial controls have sucked thousands of dollars out of Salt Lake County coffers as public works officials unwittingly overpaid for purchases ranging from auto parts to lumber.

A failure to compare invoices for purchases with original contract prices has left county officials scrambling to recover the excessive payments and fix the system, which didn't catch the discrepancies.

"We haven't had the resources to see if somebody bought a nail whether that nail was priced out on the contract list," said Larry Moller, fiscal administrator for Public Works. "We found some areas where the vendor was billing us a little higher."

In some cases, Moller said, the price of items such as tools, auto parts and machinery were higher than county contracts allowed, while other problems came from vendors not giving an agreed-to 10 percent to 50 percent discount for county government.

"We're just starting to figure out how to fix it," Moller said. "It takes a lot of resources to dig into it."

With more than 1,000 county contracts, chief financial officer Linda Hamilton said the total financial impact of the inflated charges could be steep. Although she said the final figure for what the county may have lost is still being evaluated, some county staffers say the total could be well into the millions.

To determine that dollar amount, Hamilton said temporary staffers may be hired to go through each contract and compare it with what the county is actually paying.

"We have found places where we were overpaying, but until we get a system in place, we're not at a point to have a handle on that," she said.

The inflated purchase prices were first noticed by Assistant Public Works Director Jason Godfrey during a review of financial records at the county's fleet division. Godfrey found the fleet had overpaid for auto parts from Murray vendor LaPoint Ford, but didn't know the prices had been boosted.

"Why are we paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for parts when we've got brand new cars?" Godfrey asked.

But Ken Overby, sales manager at LaPoint Ford, said the increase wasn't quite that high, and that the price bump was due to a computer system glitch. Some parts were priced too low as well, he said, averaging out to about $4,000 overcharged to the county.

Overby added that the auto dealer sent a check of more than $4,000 to the county to make up the error, but county officials have not cashed it because they are still trying to reconcile that figure with their own higher estimates of about $7,000.

"We're cooperating with the county and we're glad they brought it to our attention," Overby said. "We're not butting heads on what the problem is; there was just a computer system error."