IS IT TRUE- Part 2 October 9, 2012 (AuditGATE)

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The Mole #??

IS IT TRUE October 9, 2012

IS IT TRUE topic #2 of interest in last night’s City Council meeting was of course AuditGATE? …AuditGATE is the name we are choosing to call the series of events and decisions that lead to the City of Evansville getting a DISCLAIMER statement on the 2011 SBOA audit because the accounts had not been reconciled for all of 2011?…Councilman John Friend made it clear last night that an even bigger and more costly negative associated with this buffoonery is a bond rating downgrade that would raise the interest rate on borrowing?…Friend stated that a 1% rise in interest rates would cost the City $1.3 Million?…what he didn’t mention is that for the $500 Million EPA mandated sewer project that same 1% increase will increase the interest expense by $5 Million per year for the life of the bonds?…that even a stooge can do the math on this one to learn that $5 Million per year for 20 years is $100 Million?…that Friend quoted the SBOA auditor as being “shocked and amazed that paralleling was not done during the time that the new software was being installed to preserve the ability to reconcile”?…the best description of what happened is that the Evansville Controller’s office got an F in Information Technology 101?

IS IT TRUE that one of the things of interest is the timing of who knew what and when with respect to failure to reconcile?…that Jenny Collins, the Controller for the Weinzapfel Administration and some staff members at this time would have been aware of the failures during mid-February 2011 when they would have tried to reconcile the books for January 2011?…that Ms. Collins testified that she brought some consultants in to attempt to correct the situation in the summer of 2011 so at that point the knowledge would have spread to the consultants and the approval chain to pay those consultants?…it is safe to assume that former Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel would have learned of the failure to reconcile at the latest when Ms. Collins needed to pay her chosen consultants?…Winnecke Administration Controller Russ Lloyd was candid in admitting that he learned about these failures in January of 2012 when trying to reconcile the December 2011 books?…that the entrance meeting for the 2011 Audit opened on June 5, 2012 so at that time select members of the Winnecke Administration would have known?…John Friend was advised of what was coming at around that time by an associate at the SBOA?…the lid was blown off the 20 months of keeping the dirty little secret that the City of Evansville could not balance its books when the SBOA posted the audit a couple of weeks ago?…now we all know that the last 21 months have been a time of flying blind in the Evansville Controller’s office and now the real questions are what to do about it and how to prevent it from happening again?

IS IT TRUE that witness after witness stated things that can all basically be boiled down to WORKFORCE ISSUES?…Steve Titzer of Harding, Shymanski, and Associates, one of the consulting firms that Ms. Collins brought in during the summer of 2011 and the final signature on the embattled Johnson Controls deal that the Weinzapfel Administration jammed through in its final week, inelegantly but accurately stated “GARBAGE IN = GARBAGE OUT” when it comes to integrating a software package?…the real problem with integrating the Munis system was started by an internal decision to make the shiny new MILLION DOLLAR software look and feel like the old software that it was replacing?…that is right, a decision was made to dust up, dumb down, and devalue the new MILLION DOLLAR software that has been integrated successfully in other cities across the country so the EVANSVILLE WORKFORCE IN THE CONTROLLER’S OFFICE would be more comfortable with it?…the question of WHO made that decision was asked by several City Council members but a real answer never was given?…Ms. Collins shared that two supposedly key employees left for better jobs during the integration?…Mark Rolley whose firm was hired to assist in the integration but not in financial analysis openly stated that his contract was priced so low that he could not hire qualified people to do the job so he did the best he could?…the most comical part of last night’s intense meeting was supplied by Council President Connie Robinson who read from the MRC contract and stated that “there are no qualifications or education in here for the person you supply to us. You could just get someone with a GED that did their best and we are on the hook for it”?…Robinson delivered the line in a comical way but that it was a pathetic exclamation point on the compensation packages offered for professional employees and consultants that the City of Evansville chooses to hire for dollars and nonsense purposes?…if the City of Evansville under the Weinzapfel Administration could not hire a Controller with a CPA who could not keep professional staff or hire qualified consultants it is no wonder the City of Evansville is in a position of having a DISCLAIMER AUDIT that puts its borrowing cost at risk?…this is a fine example of penny wise and dollar stupid public policy?

IS IT TRUE that the outcome of this latest core value based fiasco is that money was wasted, many funds were comingled, $17.7 Million of ARENA BONDS WERE ALSO COMINGLED, 21 violations of Indiana laws happened, DMD was singled out for having no written plan during the Weinzapfel era, and the City Council was disrespected and intentionally kept in the dark for over a year?…that the last and perhaps most illuminating cascade of stupidity was the exposure that the parking funds were comingled because the parking enforcement department is losing money?…that even middle school class would figure out that the answer to the parking enforcement department losing money is to institute FREE PARKING?…parking enforcement has been a losing proposition for as long as Evansville has had such a thing?…our challenge to the Winnecke Administration is either to remedy this in 6 months or get rid of it and make parking in downtown Evansville FREE?…we wonder if it is really worth making downtown shoppers angry so the City can lose money?…it is time for at least one touch of sanity in what has become a SEA OF MADNESS at the Civic Center?

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17 COMMENTS

  1. There you have it folks. Jenny Collins needs to go! The Council should be ashamed that they didn’t openly ask the Mayor to fire her last night.

      • If so, good for him. What does that have to do with the price of eggs in China anyhow?

        • Just wondering how connected he is as well. With the current one wanting to run for mayor and all the polictical favor jobs around here. I was just curious how connected either may or may not be. It seems all the current elected and appointed republicrats seem to be in the same circle. It was an honest and curious question.

  2. a dog and pony show last evening that accomplished nothing. Who do we give the blue ribbons to?

  3. A ratings downgrading won’t happen. Ted Ziemer (Evansville’ Ron Paul) said that it won’t and we should believe him.

    A bunch of idiots run the City finances. I don’t understand why Jenny is still walking around the Civic Center with her $81/k a year job. Something was missing from last night’s meeting. NO ONE ASKED HER HOW BAD THE UTILITES FINANCIAL RECORDS ARE! It’s assumed that since she messed up SMG and the Controller’s records that the Utilities are now in a mess too.

  4. “SEA OF MADNESS at the Civic Center” Could not have been said better.

    The correct answer may be more than just Voting “NO” on consolidation. Maybe we need to move the county government out of the Civic Center so they aren’t exposed to and poorly influenced by the sea of madness from the city. Hey, I have an idea, what a great way to re-purpose Roberts Stadium. LOL

  5. Well for me, the word “Bedlam” comes to mind, and I wonder, ” Am I a patient here?”
    You just cannot make this stuff up, and yet it’s Real! I think.
    aaah!!

  6. “Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
    ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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  7. Bloggers, don’t forget to give Steve Titizer,CPA and his accounting firm due credit for our acoounting problems. Wasn’t Mr. Steve Titzer, CPA president of the City of Evansville Utilities Board in 2011 when a lot of the bookkeeping problems begin to come to light?

    Also, didn’t he hire Jennny Collins as Chief Fiscal Officer of the Utillities Department at $81,000 a year?

    When Steve Titizer was on the City of Evansville Utilities Board didn’t his accounting firm do work for that department?

  8. A few things that stood out to me watching last nights circus.

    At the beginning it appeared they were going to use Russ Lloyd to try to run the clock out, I think his intention was to go line by line and page by page explaining the entire SBOA report. I kinda’ felt sorry for Mr Lloyd he looked uncomfortable not knowing which direction the questions were going to go, in reality he saved the city IMHO by reconciling 2011 by hand (along with a lot of help I’m sure)he even stated that he put off the SBOA auditors as long as he could trying to fix the mess but ran out of time.

    Mr Friends analogy of the SBOA audit and a FBI investigation, then changing his mind in mid sentence…and saying that no fraud was found but not that there wasn’t any just that the SBOA couldn’t tell because of the mess the books were in. (not his exact words but a close proximity)

    If I heard it correctly…a meeting in June of 2012 where Mr Friend found out that there was a problem, which isn’t what he said here on the CCO about it being late July or August when he was sworn to secrecy by the SBOA auditor.

    The on-going (friendly) relationship between Mr Friend and the SBOA auditor which leads me to believe that he knew of the problem much earlier than stated, he mentioned multiple phone calls between them which would indicate a working relationship that had been going on for a long time even stating that her husband had worked for Mr Friend at one point.

    To me “Big Dan” offered the most telling points about how the software was configured and the costs of doing the “Best Practices Way” or the city’s way, that it wound up going to cost about the same if they had implemented the software as recommended instead of hacking it up to dumb it down.

    I do believe that this is part one and that the city council will be back on the hunt for answers at the next meeting, hopefully after digesting the info brought forward last night they can get some answers that were skirted around on not asked last night.

    As a side note….at 10am the C&P finally decided to post a story on “Auditgate” guess they had to wait on word from the civic center this morning on how to slant the story. LOL!

    JMHO

    • The city definitely need to get back to producing an annual CAFR. Friend seemed to think it would be too expensive and cited the need to have appraisals of city owned properties, etc., when Dan cut him off with: “we have that information”.

      Russ produced CAFRs when he was mayor and it was Jonathan Weinzapfel who did away with them, not producing a single CAFR for the entire 8 years of his administration.

      An annual CAFR is something the city council, as a body, and the public in general can and should demand.

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      • Agreed….

        I’d assume that the past administration stopped producing CAFRs because of other reasons besides the cost of doing so, if you read the WiKi description of what a CAFR is and what it includes vs a normal budget.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_annual_financial_report#Differences_between_a_general_budget_and_a_CAFR

        The amount of info in a CAFR is the reason, if you wanted to hide something the lack of producing a CAFR and not balancing the books for a year along with a heaping dose of incompetency in the controllers office would produce the perfect storm to hide something big IMHO.

        Of course the next big question is….does the current software package (Munis) have the capabilities to produce a CAFR? I would think since it is common practice else were to do so it would be built in the system…or at least another module to be purchased and integrated into the system.

        JMHO

        • According to Dan at the meeting last night, if the new software program was up and running correctly, it would be a simple matter after the close of the year to hand the printouts over to an accounting firm that would compile the information into a CAFR. He sounded like the cost would not be prohibitive.

          Russ Lloyd should be familiar with the process, having published CAFRs during his administration.

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  9. And the City wants to consolidate their form of government with that of the County? No thanks, I am voting NO in November.

  10. That’s it people, these clowns want to take over the whole county when the meter maids are even loosing money….

    1) Where is the Attorney General?
    2) When is the Audit going to happen on the Utilities Dept?
    3) Where is the 30+ million dependency?
    4) When are we going to ask for our money back on the software?
    5) Why does Miss Jenny still have a job?

  11. When Wienie-Zapple left the mayor’s office he had more than $800,000 in campaign funds. Shouldn’t that money be turned over to the City of Evansville to pay for cleaning up the mess he made of this city?

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