Fiscal Rangers

Greetings from Kabul, Afghanistan - the new FiscalRangers HQ

Well, I did it. I am in Kabul, Afghanistan helping to setup internal audit programs in various government ministries. I am working for a consulting firm known for doing this type of work, and I knew some of their staff when I was in Iraq. I will be here 12 months. Naturally, of course, just after I left on May 19th, I got email weather notices that there were tornado, then flood warnings for Tavares. So, already I have found out some interesting things. The US Government has programs to assist the Afghanistan government in improving accounting and budgeting, and a colleague is rolling out program budgets for the different ministries here. That is interesting because neither the Lake County School District or County have the more modern program budgeting that includes performance benchmarks for various departments. Instead, if you look at the detailed budgets from either Lake County agency, they are still using the kindergarten level line item budgets that don't measure or show productivity, efficiency or effectivenes. Basically, Lake county administrators only look at whether the annual budget approved by the elected officials has been exceeded or not. So, it seems Afghanistan will soon have more modern government... Read more →

California Employees to Suffer Fate of Overtaxing the Population

The news is full of discussion about the California legislature failing to set a new lower budget to match expected lower income. Below is just one article. As always (I am from California), they threaten to layoff masses of employees, and it may actually happen this time, with up to 20,000 State Government employees losing their jobs. Additionally, like in Florida, they are reducing funds to local governments, which have overpromised fire and police pensions, throwing them into a possible default position. The house of cards of overtaxation and excess government wages is about to collaps, starting in California in a big way. Florida can't be much behind, because they don't have an income tax, but the employee groups have usually managed to get wages higher than the growth of gdp or long term tax income trends, thus we will see the same collapse here. That means constant turmoil in elected offices, government managers, etc. because they all ignore basic economics related to the taxpayer's ability to fund excess government spending and wages, thus causing a constant turmoil. You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until the School District SEIU is pitted against the Teacher's union, and fire department funding is... Read more →

Introducing School District Fiscal Reform Activist Peyton Wolcott

If you live in Texas, and some other states, you probably already know about school reform activist Peyton Wolcott, who has a website a http://www.peytonwolcott.com/ . Peyton started several grass roots school fiscal and policy reform groups in Texas and is nationally known as the leader to get schools to publish their entire check register online to provide transparency over spending. Peyton also reads this blog and periodically sends me tips. Today I got another one regarding the Monroe County School District $180,000 fraud we have been covering. If you go to Peyton's "Faq" page, it will give you a detailed history. She also has now broadened her objectives to provide tips and info to other school reform activist groups, and she just might be eying Florida as her next fixit task! So, I don't need to rewrite what is on Peyton's website - go check it out. And, I have always planned to start recommending that local agencies start online publishing not only of DETAILED budgets, but monthly "financials" (really kindergarten level budget status reports) and online check registers. There is too much money being spent by the staff and or elected officials without much transparency in Lake County.... Read more →

Update on Monroe County (FL) School District $180,000 Grand Theft & Fraud case

Below is a follow up article on the $180,000 fraud case in Monroe County in the School District. - People are calling for the resignation of the School Supt because his wife is accused. - High School students running for office are doing so on a "fiscal integrity" ticket. - They are barely starting investigation into misuse of school credit cards... This is a good example of how ignoring cash and finance controls at a school, possibly due to nepotism, can really cause problems not only for a School District Board but the Superintendent. Note: In the Lake County (FL) School District, there have been two past audits of school accounts where it was found that Lake County high schools had very poor controls over game tickets. They could not match the ticket "sold" count to the cash collected. I was in the audit committee meetings for one of the audit presentations, and we tried to get the issue added to the personnel file for the Principals who ignored earlier audit findings, but it went nowhere. The problem was that if you cannot account for serially numbered tickets "sold" or distributed at football games, etc. then it means either someone... Read more →