Fiscal Rangers

Florida Website Discloses Teacher Misconduct

Most Florida teachers work hard and have no personal misconduct. BUT, there are a few who do act improperly, and a Florida Dept. of Education website, www.Myfloridateacher.com is listing new and old cases of teacher misconduct, officially called "Disciplinary Actions against Educator Licenses". This website is limited in search capability - you can't just scroll through teacher names, even by District or School, and you have to enter one teacher name at a time after specifying a District or Any District. There also are no statistics by District or School. They should provide a capability to list the names of all disciplinary actions for all teachers by District or School. And, what happens if they change their name? The website only lists names of those with a disciplinary action after January, 2006 - if there are no "final" actions, no data is shown. We had to travel via the web to the Houston Chronicle to get this article written by the St. Petersburg Times (Tampa area) that describes the website's disciplinary reporting system, which is buried several levels down in the website using obtuse language. To get to the main "Bureau of Professional Practices" page, go to: http://www.fldoe.org/edstandards/ And to... Read more →

School's Lame Duck Super Quacks to Approve Public Records Requests

Anna Cowin, elected lame duck Superintendent of Lake County Schools is at it again. She has declared that public information requests for the $742-million District be run by her for approval because recent ones have cost a total of $8000 (out of the $742-million budget). Below is the Daily Commercial article on the issue and how two of the Board members have submitted requests and are encountering delays. It seems strange that an elected Board member must file a formal public records request to get info, but I agree, they shouldn't have to pay for it. vj ================================================== from: http://www.dailycommercial.com/main.asp?SectionID=31&SubSectionID=162&ArticleID=23573&TM=75384.7 Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Cowin, board squabble over records Lame-duck superintendent exerts control over who gets what information and when Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Like the press or the public, board members are subject to service charges for their requests unless it's approved by the board, according to Cowin's new policy. The Lake County School District has seen a flood of public records requests lately. "Recently, this office has had several, voluminous and time- consuming requests for documents and information from individual members of the school board, as well as the press and public," Cowin wrote in the memo. "I'm... Read more →

FL Legislators Get Free Health Insurance While Cutting Others

Mike Thomas, the Orlando Sentinel columnist, wrote a good column (below) on an issue where part time State Legislators, who are considered part timers, get fully paid free health insurance while part time teachers have to pay a contribution towards their insurance. To me, this is a bigger issue of the practice of paying full insurance costs for government employees in many agencies, while most businesses and corporations require employees to contribute towards their health care costs. Thomas cites the requirement that part time teachers must pay about $750 per month for family coverage. Most businesses probably can't afford health insurance at all for part time staff, but government does. These practices mean that one married spouse can be a part time teacher and get health coverage, and the other can be working in a business like construction where they may have low or no insurance, and the taxpayer is subsidizing the other spouse's choice to work for a firm without insurance coverage. However, Thomas is right - why should elected officials be given fully subsidized health insurance without paying a contribution percentage like other employees. Maybe we need to require that all government agencies post their employee health insurance... Read more →

Rules before Voting for a School District Board Member

It seems in Texas there has been a huge credit card scandal where a School District in Dallas let employees have credit cards and they wasted millions. Then, several School Districts cut contracts with Superintendents that gave them big payoffs if fired. So, below is an article from on Texas blogger explaining some rules he would demand from School District Board Members before he would vote for a Board member (called "Trustee" in TX). They should be considered for the Lake County, FL School District as well. vj =================================================== from: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26196 Six Simple Rules for Being My School Trustee by Lynn Woolley (more by this author) Posted 04/24/2008 ET Updated 04/24/2008 ET Some people call Peyton Wolcott a watchdog or even a bulldog. Some within the education establishment likely call her far worse for her relentless pursuit of open and ethical government. Having convinced many ISD’s to post their check registers online, she’s now asking school trustees to make an ethics pledge. If you’re thinking that ethics in government should go without saying, you’re absolutely right. If you take it for granted that all school districts operate within the boundaries of ethics, you are quite wrong. The Dallas ISD, for... Read more →

Clinton & Obama Hide $265-$333 Billion Cost of Promised New Programs

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been making many promises to start new programs, but not specifying where the funds would come from. So, the Washington Post added up the costs of all the promised new programs and both candidates come up short of fiscal integrity. It isn't sexy, as the second editorial below the first one says, but failing to explain the source of funding for new programs seems to me to be unethical and a reason why any candidate should be voted out or down. vj ===================================================== from WashingtonPost.com at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/24/AR2008042402917.html Who'll Cover the Checks? The Democratic candidates' tax and spending plans are costly and ambitious -- and probably short on fiscal realism. Friday, April 25, 2008; A22 THE DEMOCRATIC presidential candidates have some big plans -- with big price tags attached. By our calculations, using figures supplied by the campaigns, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has proposed new spending and tax breaks that would amount to almost $265 billion a year when fully implemented, while the initiatives proposed by Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) total nearly $333 billion. Those initiatives, which would be phased in over time and which the candidates say they have identified ways of funding,... Read more →

Full Disclosure Video News Announces CD Series on Belmont School $170-million Fiasco

One of my early posts on this blog was about the infamous Los Angeles School District construction fiasco where LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) built a $170-million High School on an old oil field tract of land that had bubbling gases oozing out of the ground even as construction continued. It is considered a classic case study on how an inept School District mismanaged a construction project, and the entire school had to be torn down due to the environmental problems that were ignored. Now, the Video News service "Full Disclosure" has issued a collection of CD's of interviews of all the participants and observers in the mess and it is quite enlightening. Below is the press release, but go to their webpage and watch the 7-minute YouTube preview of the CD series. If you are a School Board member, construction manager, etc. you should get his series to ensure you don't make the same mistakes. vj ================================================ from: http://www.emediawire.com/releases/BELMONT_LASCHOOLS/SCHOOL_CONSTRUCTION/prweb883694.htm Full Disclosure Network® Presents: LAUSD's "Belmont The World's Most Expensive High School" a Commemorative DVD Collection from the Cable TV Series To Commemorate the official opening celebration for the notorious Belmont Learning Center by the Los Angeles Unified School... Read more →

Lake County Allows Contracted Law Firms to Donate to Re-Election Campaigns

The article below discusses a practice in some counties, including Volusia County AND Lake County, where contracted Attorney's for School District Boards are allowed to donate to re-election campaigns of incumbent School Board members. The article mainly centered on a Daytona Beach attorney who is paid up to $285/hour by the Volusia County School Board and had donated $1500 to each of two elected Board members who are running for re-election. The article does say that some counties and law firms prohibit such donations, but Lake County's School District does allow it. They didn't have any details on whether the contracted law firm for the School District has made such donations, but here is a quote from one of the Board members: In Lake County, School Board member Cindy Barrow said she would not turn down such a campaign contribution. "Everyone in this country is free to donate to any candidate that they would like to donate money" to, she wrote via e-mail. The Lake County School District Board should prohibit such election donations from any vendor, not just attorney's, who do business with the School District. Or, there should be a clear, public disclosure of each such donation on... Read more →

Toledo, Ohio Taxpayer Funded Pool Cost Calculations

A reader sent me this link. It seems a City of Toledo Bureaucrat was trying to justify the expense to rebuild a local swimming pool and a taxpayer and blog writer did calculations on how much per person it was costing. It gives a clear indication of how local government bureaucrats get carried away with "feel good" spending that costs the taxpayer a bundle. vj ====================================== http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2008/04/14/swimming-pools-marked-as-necessity-in-cash-strapped-toledo/ Swimming Pools Marked as ‘Necessity’ in Cash-Strapped Toledo April 14, 2008 Warner Todd Huston Maggie Thurber over at Thurber’s Thoughts has a story that reveals the nanny state foolishness we are so woefully stuck with these days. Apparently, the City of Toledo, Ohio is sinking over half a million dollars into keep their city swimming pools afloat all the while the city is whining that they are out of cash and need to raise taxes. Naturally, the excuse is that the city is somehow obligated to provide entertainment for its citizens. You’d be excused if you thought that a little idiotic. The Toledo Blade reports that director of Toledo’s department of neighborhoods Kattie Bond told the paper that, “It is important to provide recreational opportunities for citizens. We live in a city where... Read more →

More School District Pension Payment Scams in Long Island, NY

We just had a post about some employees in a New Hampshire School District who managed to get increased pension payments when the administration condoned adding "illegal" amounts to the base pay used to calculate pensions. Here is another case - this one in New York, where about 90 attorneys used on a contract basis by various school districts managed to get their contract earnings to be used as qualification for pensions. New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says that is illegal and the attorneys should never have qualified for pensions. Cuomo started his investigation after Newsday published investigation reports on the problem. What does it take to get competent financial oversight in School Districts so this type of thing does not occur? Why is it we must rely on newspapers to uncover these issues, and not School Administrators? Maybe another taxpayer revolt? I hope Cuomo also prosecutes the School Administrators who allowed this to happen. Favorite quote from the article below: Cuomo said his office was considering bringing criminal or civil charges against the lawyers and seeking to recoup potentially "tens of millions of dollars" in pension monies that the lawyers may have improperly received at the expense... Read more →

New Hampshire School District Illegally Hikes Pension Payments

One of the most inflammatory areas where government employees may try to cook the numbers is to mess with the method used for calculating the value of payments for sick days, vacation or pension calculations when they retire. My first internal audit position in California at the County of Los Angeles taught me how it was done. Employees or benefits clerks would include extra work days or years in calculations of the amount used for retirement. A common trick was to include high overtime in the last 2-3 years and the payoff value of sick leave into the pension calculation numbers, inflating the base value used to calculate pensions. We caught a few of them because many payroll and benefits records were still manual in the early 1970's. (The article below indicates this practice is still legal in New Hampshire - what private corporation would ever agree to such practices?) Another way is for unions to push through changes in the payment calculation methods. Around 2000, in Orange County, California, when the economy was still running great before the dot.com crash, the Sherrif's union got the County Board to increase pension payment credits for pensions by 50%. That is now... Read more →

Comments Submitted to HUD Requiring new Home Purchase disclosures

HUD (the Federal Agency Housing & Urban Development - which defines Federal regulations related to home buying, etc. ) has issued a proposed new requirement regarding the disclosure and good faith estimate documents used in the home purchase process. In my experience, after moving to FL and buying a home here in 2005, Florida is inept at the disclosure of future estimated property taxes and insurance costs. Below is the comment I filed with HUD regarding the new document design: The failure by HUD and the States to require accurate estimates of future property taxes and insurance costs for new home buyers is a major factor that causes economic distress to them about 12-15 months after closing the transaction. I wish to ADD a suggested component to the home buying process. The problem is that the good faith documents always use out of date property tax and insurance estimates, if at all, and yet here in Florida, everyone gets hit with much higher taxes and insurance than expected because the prior homeowner paid taxes and insurance based upon his original purchase price, which could be much lower. There is NO specific, professional requirement to calculate an accurate estimate of property... Read more →

Deltona Failure to measure advertising results

This entry was triggered by an article today in the Orlando Sentinel about the city of Deltona in Volusia County using professional models for their city website designed to attract new businesses. The website is at: www.deltonameansbusiness.com But, I am not writing to discuss the models, but a single statement in the article that illustrates the lack of management skills in the government sector. Taxpayers deserve professional managers that measure performance just like businesses do. Here is the quote using information from Deltona's Assistant City Manager Sally Sherman: "Sherman's economic development colleagues acrass the state called Deltona's site attractive and colorful. The site doesn't have a way to TRACK visitiors, but people are responding to it, said Sherman, who has been working in economic development for more than 20 years. "Numerous" companies have contacted the city with questions, she said, adding: "That's exactly what you want." So, we have an economic manager who says an ad is worthwhile because colleagues (not customers) say it is colorful, AND she has NO MEANS to track the number of visitors (i.e. a hit count meter which is COMMON on most business websites), or apparently NO OTHER way to measure website effectiveness in attracting... Read more →

Orange School District (FL) audit bashes construction program

REVISED - On Apr. 16, we added the response opinion article from the Orange County Public Schools Superintendent - it is at the end of this post. It is pretty reasonable, so maybe this audit wasn't as big a deal as the paper made it to be. vj Our next door County neighbor, the Orange School District in Orange County, FL just got hammered by State Auditor General audit for poor construction program practices. About a year ago, I tried to find if the AG had any auditors that specialized in construction audits, and they said no. I wanted them to audit construction at the Lake County (FL) School District. Instead, the Lake Audit Committee engaged the CPA "internal audit services" of RSM McGladrey and four audits are going on right now. However, RSM uses the old fashioned audit practice of a "close out" audit, which means they wait until all spending is done, then they audit and find the mistakes. Most corporate internal audit departments run by Certified Internal Auditors have practiced "front end" audits for about 15 years, where the auditor reviews contracts, systems and procedures for construction at the front end of the construction project, and fix... Read more →

Columnist Scott Maxwell's Tips for Ticked Off Citizens

Scott Maxwell writes a good column on politics in the Orlando Sentinel. Today's column explains how he wakes up and gets ticked off at government and political shenanigans after reading the papers. So, he provided tips to his readers on how to get more involved to fix government and politics. They are below... his reasons are some of those that agree with why I will soon start a group of Fiscal Rangers to provide another avenue to implement change and improvement in government and politics in Lake County vj ========================================== from OrlandoSentinel.com at: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-maxwell0908apr09,0,7825472.column and the list of his columns is at: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-maxwell,0,134788.columnist OrlandoSentinel.com COMMENTARY TAKING NAMES Mad? Get vocal, get informed -- and get involved Scott Maxwell TAKING NAMES April 9, 2008 Most mornings, I wake up around 6 a.m. -- and am ticked off by 6:15. It comes from picking up the newspaper and reading about the latest shenanigans in Orlando, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. And it's been that way most of my life -- which is probably why I'm a newspaper columnist. What's interesting, though, is that more and more Central Floridians seem to be waking up as well. They're fed up -- and finally ready to... Read more →

Education & Government agencies are big sources of ID Theft

Lets talk about the bbigest culprits that allow identity theft to occur. As an experienced information systems auditor, I always get apprehensive when I have to deal with a government agency unit that demands personal information that I do not think is relevant, when I know they don't take very good care of the data. Examples are local agencies like the tax collector or community college asking for social security numbers on handwritten forms, or my recent experience with the Lake County dept that provides classes on measuring water quality for lakes. They asked for Driver license, personal references and birthdate details on a manual form just so I could be certified to create a water quality report by one lake. (They run a background check for some insane reason). The problem is that government employees don't take data security seriously, and periodically you read where some government employee lost a laptop computer that had thousands of employee social security data records on it. A friend who had worked in Georgia just received a notice that they had lost control of a large employee database and were paying for credit monitoring services for all employees involved. So, here is a... Read more →

Charter School in Orange County, FL might be shut down

The Orlando Sentinel article below describes how the Maitland charter school in Oranqe County, FL might be shut down because they are almost broke after paying $520,000 to only four administrators. It appears there was a complete breakdown in fiscal oversight by the OC School District and the staff gave themselves raises and siphoned off the funds for the 325 student school. In Florida, this is one of the risks of allowing charter schools to exist. The school district is required to allow formation of these schools, which take 95% of the funding per student that the District gets, and then the District doesn't have any authority to manage them. There was a series of earlier Orlando Sentinel articles and exposes which can be seen at www.OrlandoSentinel.com/onlineextras . The reporter didn't specify who did the audit that reported the problems, and we will attempt to get the audit report. Notice that the eight member board was clueless about the spending excesses and was not provided with any info on the unapproved spending. Favorite Quote: According to both the audit and Claire Olds, a co-founder and the chairwoman of Summit's board of directors, none of the spending -- including the salaries,... Read more →

New Report Says NonProfit organizations Lose $40-billion from Fraud

I have been saying that government agencies, and other institutions, like non-profit charities, have avoided businesslike controls that would help identify fraud or corruption. Well, here is a report using data from the Association of Fraud Examiners, that says the amount lost from fraud in non-profits is huge - like $40-billion out of the $300-billion per year given to non-profit organizations. The article also describes a new IRS question on non-profit tax filing forms for 2008 that requires them to disclose instances of fraud and embezzlement. Favorite quote: But what is getting the attention of nonprofit leaders is the report’s estimate of the overall cost, which the authors put at $40 billion for 2006, or some 13 percent of the roughly $300 billion given to charity that year. “It’s a surprisingly large number,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University who does surveys of public confidence in charities. “We really need to take a good hard look at what’s going on in these organizations.” vj ===================================================== from NY Times at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/29fraud.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&WT.mc_id=GN-P-E-FB-WI-TXT-ME1-X-X-0000-NA&WT.mc_ev=click&oref=slogin March 29, 2008 Report Sketches Crime Costing Billions: Theft From Charities By STEPHANIE STROM The volunteer treasurer of the Madison County Humane Society... Read more →