Fiscal Rangers

Two Week Recap of Lake County School District Fiscal Fiascos

Today is the planned District workshop and Board meeting. So I thought I would write a recap of some of the District Fiscal Fiasco issues in the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, I attended a Board meeting of the Lake County (FL) School District. At the meeting, I submitted a white paper on what the board should do to finally take a stand to fix the financial mis-management by Supt. Anna Cowin. The paper is at "A", below. The next day, the Daily Commercial had a screaming headline saying that a community leader in a group called VOICE (I think they are Democrats, because their pictures are on the Lake County Democrat website) calling for Anna Cowin's OUSTER. That article is at "B", below. Her lack of management skills and stubborness for allowing transparency now are the subject of continuous letters to the editor and articles in local papers. During the recent period, there also erupted at least two articles and a response opinion letter where Anna Cowin was using a public records request demanding that Board member Cindy Barrow provide copies of all emails she sent out to supporters. Barrow is a Democrat and was involved with the... Read more →

Chief Financial Officer quits Lake County School District

I missed this earlier January article about the CFO for the Lake County School District quitting in January. Here it is: Cowin's 3rd finance leader resigns From Orlando Sentinel - January 11, 2007 TAVARES -- The school system's chief financial officer has resigned and will take a job elsewhere, Superintendent Anna Cowin announced Wednesday. Bonnie Penner was the third person to direct the finances since Cowin took office in late 2004. Penner, 39, started work for the Lake County School District in June 2005 as finance director. In August 2006, she moved up to chief financial officer, making $108,000 annually. Penner's resignation is effective Jan. 19. She said she will take a job as director of budget and finance at Florida Virtual School, an online school serving grades six through 12. "This is a wonderful opportunity for me because it is the development of a budget and finance department," she said. Penner declined to say how much she will be paid but acknowledged she will be taking a pay cut. Tommy Crosby, whom Penner replaced, resigned to take a job that paid $18,283 less than he made in Lake County. Martin E. Comas, Lauren Ritchie, Nin-Hai Tseng and Christine Dellert... Read more →

Anna Cowin Explodes Once Again in Florida

Lake County (FL) School District Superintendent Anna Cowin has exploded into another fit again. She started complaining about emails from one of the elected Board Members, and started a ruckus. See the articles below. Meanwhile, I thought why not do a Google on Anna Cowin to find what else was published on the net. Boom, I found plenty... This blog posted several articles about Cowin and you can find them by entering the following line in Google: "anna cowin" site:schlerplotti.typepad.com Then there are the pictures and info at the Lake County Democrats website about a 2005 rally against Cowin's removal of a locally respected school Principal - do one of the people in the pictures look like a new member of the School Board? http://www.lakedemocrats.com/Photo%20Pages/Sch_Bd_6-13-05.html The above two sources also had several references to a www.removecowin.com website initiated by Lake County Assessor Ed Havill, and said there were many articles about Cowin. But, the website has been totally removed now. Then there is this article in the St. Petersburg Times in 2005 about Anna Cowin hiring a Manager who had blundered at two other school districts... http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/15/Hernando/Lake_County_controver.shtml Anna Cowin was previously a Florida State Senator, and apparently had a reputation.... Read more →

Lake County School District's Internal Auditor Resigns

Last week, the Internal Auditor for the Lake County, FL School District resigned from lack of support by the elected Superintendant, Anna Cowin, and the Board. This was documented in Feb. 21 articles in both the Daily Commercial and the Orlando Sentinel's Lauren Richie column. Both of those articles are inserted at the bottom of this post. This website was initially created in 2006 to describe continuous management problems at the School District when the District Auditor had problems with cooperation last year in 2006. Now Cowin's lack of support for the audit function has finally resulted in the Auditor leaving. For instance, they stuck the auditor in Dabney school, a mostly abandoned old school building with only 2-3 other people in it. They refused to give her a full time permanent secretary. Instead, she got temp workers who were paid so low, that three of them quit. There were constant problems with getting timely responses for documents needed for audits, and many old audit reports from the State have not been responded to by internal staff. There is no excuse for such behavior on the part of management of a public organization with $700,000 million in revenue and 5,000... Read more →