Fiscal Rangers

Wunderbar - the new Lake County, FL Court Clerk, Gary Cooney, has Appointed a new, QUALIFIED, Inspector General

Wunderbar - the newly elected Lake County, FL Court Clerk, Gary Cooney, has Appointed a new, QUALIFIED, Inspector General, Terri Freeman. Read more →

Project Veritas uncovers a Deep State Federal Auditor working on anti-Capitalist campaigns at work - Call your Congressman

Project Veritas uncovered on video a FEDERAL GAO staffer and card-carrying member of the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) admitting he works to destroy capitalism using work time. As a retired internal audit manager this makes me really angry so I submitted this video link and other information to Trey Gowdy's US House Oversight & Reform Committee and asked for a public investigation. Read more →

Florida Division may have cooked work statistics to get better performance rankings

The Inspector General for the Florida Dept. of Business & Professional Regulation (DBPR) reported an audit of a department for cooking the books and submitting multiple work tickets for single work projects to inflate work statistics. The whisteblower also said inflating the numbers would increase rates paid by insured parties. We include the report excerpt and comment on the report and issue. Read more →

Palm Beach County Audit Discloses Favoritism & Cronyism in Selecting Contractors

Tavares, FL April 17, 2015 This is older news, but a relevant example of local government cronyism, bribery, and waste in Palm Beach County, FL Source: Orlando Sentinel: "Lunches, golf outings and vacations involving a Palm Beach County official and government contractors created a potential perception of favoritism in awarding $9 million in publicly funded work, according to the county's inspector general. The inquiry raised questions about Deputy County Engineer Tanya McConnell's role in directing county contracts to three firms represented by people she described as "friends." While Inspector General John Carey found that no laws were broken, he did call for changes to the county's contracting process. He also forwarded the case to the county's Ethics Commission for further review, which rules on potential violations of the county's ethics code." READ more HERE. The above article provides an example of how a strong County Director can bluff staff into giving business to favored vendors who are "friends". It is amazing she was that stupid when the County hired an Independent Inspector General several years ago due to political corruption. Link to Palm Beach Inspector General's website - which has link to the above mentioned 4/16/2015 "Engineering Department" audit. Vance... Read more →

Lake County School Board and Superintendent Restrict District Audit Director from Auditing Certain Functions

Today the Daily Commercial published a front page article about recent actions by the Lake County School Board to restrict the ability of the District Internal Audit Director from reviewing "teaching and learning" processes. We comment on why that is a bad idea. Never forget that government is a monopoly, so extra oversight and transparency is needed to ensure operations are efficient, effective and economical. One way to do that is have an independent internal audit function with full and unfettered access to all employees, vendors, and records. Read more →

Florida Gets a D- and is ranked 30th in National State Integrity Investigation Report

Florida ranked a D- in a new, national study comparing all states in 13 "integrity" or accountability categories. A well known national watchdog, Center for Public Integrity ( http://www.publicintegrity.org/ ), published their annual "State Integrity Investigation" report comparing how each state ranks in 13 categories related to transparency, oversight and accountability. A partner, www.GlobalIntegrity.org was also involved in the report development. Florida, like MOST states, ranked near the bottom with a D- and only three states had higher C or B rankings. Based on points, Florida "achieved" a 61, and was 30th out of all 50 states (or 57 states if you are Obama). Read more →

City of Opa-locka, FL suffers from Corruption Scandal, fails to pay phone & other bills

Tavares, FL Nov. 5, 2015 A corruption scandal in the city of Opa-locka, FL has caused the city to run out of cash and they aren't paying their bills. "The city even stopped paying life insurance premiums for its workers. You know it's bad when their phone service is shut off for not paying the bills. I will write more later, but here is an initial story on it: Miami Herald On brink of financial collapse, Opa-locka seeks state help For Opa-locka government leaders, the signs of financial distress came abruptly last month: The phone service to City Hall was shut off. Then came the complaints: The city owed thousands in rent payments for police satellite offices and $100,000 to a contractor who walked off the job while restoring the historic City Hall. The city even stopped paying life insurance premiums for its workers. Just two weeks after a corruption scandal embroiled Opa-locka's leaders, the city is faced with another grim development: Opa-locka is edging toward financial collapse. http://www.miamiherald.com/…/miami-gar…/article43040772.html vj Read more →

Lake County, FL Inspector General Bob Melton speaks at North Lake County Tea Party

July 24, 2015 Tavares, FL The Inspector General for Lake County, FL, Bob Melton, was the featured speaker at a meeting of the North Lake Tea Party on July 14, 2015. He works for the Lake County Court Clerk, and can do performance audits of the Lake County Government, but not the Constitutional Officers unless they request an audit. They have never done so. But this talk focuses on his department abilities, and provides insights into the function of Guardianships and what he has seen when working at other Counties. Here is a link to the video of his 45 minute talk: https://youtu.be/jzrh2R8zw14 Here is his Powerpoint shown in his video: Download Role of the IG in Government Guardianships FINAL Here is the Inspector General's webpage on the Lake County Court Clerk website, including many performance audits of Lake County Government functions. Opinion In my view as an experienced Internal Audit Manager, Melton's group issues some very good audit reports on inefficiencies and needed performance improvements in County Departments. He just needs authority to initiate similar performance audits of all the Constitutional Officers and other local agencies like Cities or the North Lake Hospital District or the Lake County Water... Read more →

James Krakowski reports on Jul. 20 Lake County School Board meeting results

Tavares, FL July 23, 2015 www.FiscalRangers.com by Vance Jochim Updated August 19, 2015 to reflect additional facts James Krakowsi and I were at the recent July 20th Lake County School Board afternoon "Special Meeting" (like a workshop) and he did such a good job describing what happened that I am including it here. James is a leader in the South Lake 912 Project group that meets in Clermont. Their website is at http://www.southlake912project.com/ . Most of the reports are routine, but I spent time and added comments below on the PD360 program which is a classic case of government mis-management and waste. But the Dept of Evaluations & Accountability staff did a great job of exposing it after Board member Marc Dodd asked for a review of it. (Update: I was told that Supt. Moxley requested the review before Dodd asked questions, but in my opinion if he didn't ask questions and maintain visibility it might still be sitting in a drawer.) You can see the video of the entire 3+ hour meeting HERE on the Lake County Schools YouTube channel. You can read or download the full agenda of the meeting HERE on BoardDocs on the School District website.... Read more →

Daily Commercial Discloses Capabilities of County Inspector General Bob Melton

Tavares, FL Lake County, FL Dec. 7, 2014 For eight years I have attended Lake County School Board meetings, and attended County Board meetings for 6 years. As a former Certified Internal Auditor I have preached the need to have competent Internal Auditors in both County Government and for the Lake County School District. During that time, each agency went through three auditors and now both have very competent Certified Internal Auditors (CIA) who focus on efficiency, effectivenes and economical operations reviews. I also was a CIA for 20 years. Today the Daily Commercial published a front page story by Livi Stanford on the County's Inspector General, Bob Melton. Livi is the reporter covering both the Lake County Board and the Lake County School District, and has recently been writing articles on the detailed audit reports from each agency's audit departments. Hooray. Now they need to do a story on School District Internal Audit Director Tom Mock, another Certified Internal Auditor. Read the Daily Commercial story HERE. You can find internal audit reports from Melton's website as well as the Lake County internal audits of Tom Mock at these two links: http://www.lakecountyclerk.org/internal_audit/default.aspx and http://www.lake.k12.fl.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=114 And for more background on why... Read more →

SHOCKING - Daily Commercial NOW says the Lake County, FL County Commission Should Review the Budget

Yes, today the Lake County, FL newspaper, the Daily Commercial, had both a front page article AND an "OurVoice" editorial saying NOW the County Board, after raising taxes by almost 14%, should "get serious about your budget". This article contains a review of a newspaper article, an editorial and my specific responses to the points in them. Read more →

Audit of Lake County, FL Records Management Function Finds Bad Management, Frequent Errors

Tavares, FL - July 8, 2013 Note: The audit, IT Records Management, described here was requested by the Lake County Board, so kudos for them authorizing the audit, but I wonder whether the County management has a clue about how to manage functions effectively. The audit is attached at the end of this posting. Updates to this page will be posted after the July 9th Lake County Board meeting. Opinion A new 10-page audit report from the Lake County Court Clerk's Audit Department found that a one person "Records Management" department within the Lake County IT Department responsible for tracking and storing older County records (not for the Court Clerk, but for the County) had significant problems. This audit report is in the consent agenda for the Tuesday, July 9th, 9am Lake County Board meeting in Tavares in the round County Administration building. Taxpayers concerned about fiscal fiascos and management oversight should attend the meeting or watch it on video via the County agenda page HERE. The audit found: - The Records Management Liasion Officer (RMLO) failed to destroy 54% of all stored boxes of records when scheduled for destruction, resulting in the use of twice the warehouse storage space... Read more →

Lake County Fails to Invoice Pet Owners for $500,000 to $1-million in Annual Fees

Tavares, FL - Jan. 9, 2013 Normally, I support any reduction in taxes as a general principal. But, what if you paid $2000 in annual property taxes, then found the County Tax Collector was not issuing tax bills to all the residents of the Plantations retirement community? Or, you were a law firm partner and found staff was not billing clients who graduated from Eustis High School? Would you be mad? Well, Lake County did just that until a recent audit report described in the Daily Commercial. They were not invoicing pet owners for State required pet license renewals or failure to get tags. And, if they had fees like surrounding counties, they could have collected $500,000 per year at least to offset costs of the Animal Services Dept. And, if a pet was found without tags, they only issued warnings and not citations that resulted in fines. The result is another estimated $531,000 lost. Since the Animal Services Dept. is funded with over $1-million from the general fund which is mostly funded by your property tax funds, all homeowners are paying to highly subsidize pet owners and animal services rather than just pet owners paying the costs for Animal... Read more →

Florida County Activists Ask Lake County FiscalRangers for Help to Resolve Corruption

Activists and TeaParty members in other Florida Counties are aware of FiscalRangers. We just got a query from one County activist group asking how they can stop corruption in their County. They listed a number of officials and issues, so here is what I sent them, and I expect to talk to them later. Vance Jochim ================================================== The Florida Grand Jury published a big report on Corruption in Florida last December and Pam Bondi has done nothing to market it to the legislature to get the recommendations implemented, even though her Attorney General Dept. runs the Grand Jury investigations. The Florida Auditor General has no “resources” to initiate citizen requests for audits. They mostly focus on CPA type financial and regulatory compliance audits, and not audits for efficiency, effectiveness or to detect and fix corruption. Almost all local government oversight is left up to local County agencies and officials. The legislative Audit Committee will not initiate citizen requests for audits, which are sent to the Auditor General, BUT they will do so if asked by a legislator. So, you need to have a legislator request an audit like what you want, and the AG may do it . But, the... Read more →

National Website Monitors "State Integrity" and Ranks States - Florida is a C-

Tavares, FL - March 20, 2012 I found a new website that is run by a number pf public integrity types of organizations, and they rank all the States by several categories and rank their "Corruption Risk". Here is Florida's page, which shows abysmal rankings in most categories, and an average C- in Corruption Risk . Even with that ranking, they are 18th out of all the states, which shows how much worse other states are. http://www.stateintegrity.org/florida I noticed that they ranked "Internal Audit" as one of the only "A" categories, so I posted this comment: As a former corporate internal audit director, Certified Internal Auditor and anti-corruption adviser, I was amazed to see you give Florida an A for internal audit. I write a blog on local Lake County, FL government agency fiscal fiascos and mis-management at www.FiscalRangers.com . After five years of monitoring issues here, I do not believe there is ANY oversight on about 2000 local government agencies comparable to what I saw in Fortune 500 firms, the County of Los Angeles or even the Federal government. They may do nice, clean "financial audits" but the Inspector General has no authority to initiate performance or internal audits... Read more →

Broward County, FL Inspector General Issues First Report and blasts County Economic & Small Biz Development

The new Broward County Inspector General just issued a report blasting the total mis-management of a County run small business certification program designed to give County contracts a local preference. Only local government could create a $750,000 fiscal fiasco like this (or State or Federal Government.). I can't stop - there is a basic management rule cited by Ronald Reagan - "Trust but verify", but these county managers trusted, but didn't verify the vendors' true eligibility for local government contracts. Best quotes: “The OIG determined that at least $750,000 in public funds, and in all probability a lot more has been misspent as a result of gross mismanagement by the OESBD,’’ Scott said Friday. “Our office is going to work with county government to make sure this doesn’t happen.’’ In one instance, the Inspector General found that a county vendor, Everytrade International Company, was awarded 37 county contracts worth nearly $750,000 since June 2007. At least 35 of those contracts required the vendor to be certified as a Small Business Enterprise, which gives the designated company exclusive access to certain county contracts and preference in the procurement process. But according to the Inspector General, Everytrade International is actually a brokerage... Read more →

Palm Beach County School Board Resists Coverage by new County Inspector General

Gee, why would a government agency board NOT WANT an outside, independent watchdog group to look at their internal operations? But, Palm Beach County has a new Inspector General with authority over the County operations and local cities, but not the School District. So, the School District is now creating their OWN Inspector General and PROMOTING their existing internal auditor into the position. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/editorials/for-school-district-internal-inspector-general-weaker-than-2030290.html?cxtype=rss_editorials This editorial supports the idea of the County Inspector General having oversight of the School District, and we think it is a good idea. What do you think? vj Read more →

Broward County, FL Inspector General Office up and running...

In 2010, Broward County, FL Commissioners amended the County charter to create an Inspector General department, and in April, 2011, they hired an ex-US Justice Department manager to run it. The IG department was setup after pressure from citizens due to excess government fraud and corruption. They now have a website up and running and some background pages, but no reports yet. The IG had independent authority over all County operations AND all cities in the County. Lake County does NOT have an Inspector General, and the "County Clerk Auditor" in the County Clerk's department has no authority to open audits in other County or City operations. Basically, there is no central auditor in Lake County with authority to audit or investigate County operations, Constitutional officers or cities. And, you can't request an audit from the Florida Auditor General without approval by the separate Legislative Audit Committee (which rarely does give approval or funding) So, this posting is a place marker to contain the website information on the Broward County Inspector General: http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Pages/Default.aspx vj Here is a short SunSentinel.com article explaining the announcement of the new website... http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2011/12/broward_inspector_general_offi.html Read more →

County Attorney Overspends Impact Fee Funded Land Buys by $28-million

Jan. 28, 2011 I always read the Saturday papers in detail because they usually contain articles about government screwups, and the government agency releases the information late on Friday, hoping no one reads the Saturday paper or watches the Saturday TV news. Oooops...I found a BIG government screwup... But, fortunately, this $28-million attorney caused screw up was not in Lake County, but in Osceola County. We have written or provided public input about the lack of business sense in Lake County attorney led contract writing issues in Lake County (and recently the Lake County School District construction contracts), but this one in Osceola takes the cake. The Osceola County legal department cost their taxpayers about $28-million more than budgeted for road project land buys. It seems Osceola County wanted to launch seven road projects using local property based impact fee taxes for a total of $200-million. So the Osceola County Attorney's office somehow decided that all land purchases should be accomplished not by negotiations, but by suing the owners of 360 parcels of land they needed. AND, the Assistant Attorney followed that plan without she or anyone keeping track of the running costs or comparing the final costs of all... Read more →

Lake County Auditor Issues Audit Report on County Employee Services Dept. 17 months after Initial Complaints Filed

So, 17 months after local government reformer Lee Johnson prepared a massive report on problems in the Lake County Employee Services Dept., the County Auditor finally issued a 43 page audit report with 62 Findings, and included the responses from the County officials. You can find our initial August 18, 2008 posting about this issue and Lee Johnson's research HERE. You can find our later Sept. 18, 2008 posting on Johnson's research WITH all his reports attached HERE. The link to the recent audit report is further down in this report. Basically, Johnson used public records requests and found all sorts of questionable work practices related to hiring, firing, promotions and demotions in County operations. Based upon my experience as an internal audit manager in several large firms, a professional HR manager would never have condoned such practices. However, some issues could also have been due to political interference, which we will never know. During the lapsed time between Johnson's analysis and the issuance of the audit report: - one employee filed a discrimination lawsuit and settled for $50,000 - the County Manager, Cindy Hall, who originally ignored Johnson's research and tried to bury it, has been fired. - the... Read more →

Florida Legislators from Broward County to Create County Inspector General

Another Florida County is considering establishment of a County Inspector General. This is the first time I have read where it seems the County State Legislators are moving to set it up. We posted earlier about one in Palm Beach County, but that was initiated by local voters (and probably made into law by the County legislators). Inspector Generals are usually setup to investigate reports of wrong doing, and may or may not also act as operational auditors to evaluate efficiency, effectiveness or economy of operations. All Florida government agencies DO get financial audits, but that really is the routine CPA type of audit to ensure the annual financial report is correct and accurate. Such audits do not evaluate efficiencies or cost controls like many corporations do. As we have mentioned before, the oversight here in Lake County is fragmented and restricted because the County Auditor only works for the Court Clerk, and cannot initiate audits of the County Board operations or other Constitutional Officers without "negotiating" with the County Manager and getting approval of audit topics and timelines. In contrast, other states have elected County Auditor-Controllers who not only independently process accounting transactions, but also audit County wide departments... Read more →