Fiscal Rangers

10+ Reasons to Vote AGAINST Lake County, Florida's $800-million "Infrastructure Sales Tax" Referendum on Nov. 3

On Nov. 3, 2015, the ballot in Lake County, FL will have a referendum asking voters to renew an existing one penny sales tax for another 15 years that will generate between $450-800-million in taxes. The funds will be for capital spending like buildings or computers or vehicles and split in thirds for each of these three groups: 1) Lake County government, the 14 cities in Lake County, and the School District. This article covers 10+ reasons to vote NO on the referendum and conditions needed to save taxpayers $100-million plus by prohibiting use of bonds to run up government debt. Read more →

Be SURE to attend tomorrow's debate on renewing the Lake County Penny Sales Tax in November

Lake County Florida voters are asked to vote no on the "penny sales tax renewal" issue on the Nov. 2015 ballot. This article includes links to pro videos and info on why the tax should be voted down until certain conditions are inserted into the ballot language. There is also a flyer and info for a panel on August 20, 2015 in Tavares to discuss the ballot issue with two for, and two against the referendum. 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 →

Are the Lake County, FL School Board members earning their $36,000+ Salary with meetings full of non-business issues?

Tavares, FL May 11, 2015 Are the Lake County, FL School Board members earning their $36,000+ salary by cramming board meetings with non-business awards, presentations and then only discussing ONE item on a 40+ item agenda? I don't think so, and School District Board Chair Debbie Stivender's method of stacking the agenda with non-business items, preventing discussion of business items by putting them on the consent agenda, then limiting public input BEFORE an item is even discussed is un-acceptable. At 6pm today, the regular Board meeting will be at the Lake County Administrative "round" Building in downtown Tavares. However, almost everything on the agenda is a "consent" item, meaning they won't discuss it. Additionally, Chair Debbie Stivender keeps filling the agenda with MORE and MORE non-business presentations of awards which wastes the time of anyone waiting for business issues on the agenda. The agenda for this meeting includes ALL of the following presentations which could take an hour or more, so it means you give public input AFTER waiting for all of them to be completed. If you think Stivender is doing that to waste time so people won't wait to give public input, ask your School Board member why... Read more →

$300+ million per year WASTED in boondoggle Federal project

TAvares, FL May 9, 2015 Waste in Federal Government? Yup - one Federal Dept. of Energy project is so wasteful the Washington Times gave them the "Golden Hammer" award for huge waste of taxpayer funds. The US House just approved a $300-million annual payment for a boondoggle project that has no customers. "This week the Washington Times selected the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Facility (MOX) for its Golden Hammer, the paper’s award for waste, fraud, and abuse in government. POGO couldn’t agree more. MOX is a total taxpayer boondoggle. It was designed to convert weapons-grade plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel for U.S. commercial nuclear reactors, but the facility is over budget, behind schedule, and lacking even a single customer. Its sole remaining purpose seems to be pork barrel spending for South Carolina. And even by that standard, it’s exorbitantly expensive. A conservative independent assessment by the Aerospace Corp. predicts that continued Congressional funding at the rate of $345 million per year will bring the lifecycle costs of this program to $114 billion." READ about it here in a short POGO article. The link to the original Washington Times article below is included, but they force you to take a... Read more →

Small Town California Newspaper gets Pulitzer for Investigation Series on Local School District Corruption

A California school district with only four schools and 6600 students suffered huge fiscal losses due to cronyism and corruption and overpayment of salaries. The local paper published a 10-part investigative series and won a Pulitzer. One of the lessons is the corruption that can occur when contracting firms support elected school board members to get huge school bond issues totaling $200-million and related projects approved. Additionally, the District Superindant was paid $663,000 in salaries, benefits and perks, which was much higher than the Superintendant of the much larger Los Angeles School District. Read more →

Louisiana City Proves Economic Development can be a Sinkhole for $16-million in taxpayer funds

Tavares, FL Feb. 4, 2015 My golden rule is the less you allow government to have, the less they can waste. The City of Vidalia, Louisiana, has "flushed" $16-million of local, state & federal taxpayer funds into a fiscal fiasco plan to build a deepwater port, even though one already exists across the Mississippi river in Natchez. So, not much is happening in the Vidalia port for when they open later this year. They didn't involve private firms in funding the project, so there is no commitment to use it. "Despite assurances of great payoffs, Heather Malone, executive director of the Concordia Parish Economic Development District, said no private interests have taken advantage of the situation and invested in the port’s infrastructure. Port Director Wyly Gilfoil said no one ever discussed the possibility of private interests involving themselves with the port’s construction" At this point, Vidalia officials have no info that any commercial interests will even use the port when it is just as easy to drive across the bridge and use the long existing port at Natchez. Observation: They seem to have made two mistakes: - Committing $16+million in tax funds to the project without any long term committments... Read more →

Local Government FiscalFiasco: Billings, MT waste management employees steal $12,000 from recycling fund

Feb. 3, 2015 Tavares, FL Local Government Lessons Learned: This is an example where a Billings, MT government failed to implement sound cash management policies and employees took $12,000 and they can't prove who did it due to bad cash control procedures. The city of Billings, Montana has released some documents detailing disciplinary actions against Solid Waste employees who misused public money at the landfill. (from billingsgazette.com - dated Jan 28, 2015) A Billings, MT landfill supervisor resigned last summer after at least $12,000 of city money went missing, and another employee was suspended for four weeks. John Arellano, the landfill supervisor, resigned in a handwritten letter dated June 16, 2014. Barb Butler, who was suspended without pay for four weeks, signed an agreement acknowledging her misconduct. Documents detailing discipline of two of the city’s Solid Waste employees last year over alleged misuse of public money at the city landfill were released Tuesday by the city after District Court Judge Michael G. Moses ruled that Billings city officials must provide some of the records to The Billings Gazette. The first batch of documents contained Arellano's hand-written letter of resignation and a "Last Chance Agreement" signed July 15, 2014, by Butler,... 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 →

Local Government Fraud Alert: County Finance staffer in Tennessee embezzled $145,000 from Jefferson County, TN funds from 2011 to 2014

Local Government Fraud Alert: County Finance staffer embezzled $145,000 from Jefferson County, TN funds from 2011 to 2014 Read more →

Lake County's Trout Lake Center asks City of Eustis for huge Land Grab discount

Tavares, FL June 22, 2014 You can read about it HERE in this Daily Commercial article. These ducks are from my backyard, not Trout Lake. I posted my comment to the proposed giveaway of taxpayer assets: It has not appeared yet, but here is an overview of my comments: Trout Lake is a great nature preserve and fun to visit for lectures and nature displays. http://www.troutlakenature.org/ However, they are asking the City of Eustis to sell them nearby land for $400,000, about 35% of market value, which is $1.4-million after the Property Tax appraiser update values. And that is just their TAX appraisal, and not the result of a true, independent property value appraisal. If the City of Eustis agreed to the lowball offer, they would essentially be giving away City of Eustis assets to subsidize this non-profit operation. That is a land grab and not acceptable for taxpayers. They also have not discussed if they even have funding for developing the land for human access and funds for maintenance, staffing, etc. And, as a non-profit, they are proposing offering cabins and other commercial activities that would compete with TAX paying businesses. One final possibility is to have a City... Read more →

Lake County Schools Meeting Update - TWO Audit Reports Indicate Mis-Management

Tavares, FL - May 5, 2014 Update May 6 - The Daily Commercial's Livi Stanford wrote a good article on this issue here: http://www.dailycommercial.com/news/article_69b8347a-f60f-52af-8f67-bfb0a8621331.html 2nd Update - May 6th 5pm: The Orlando Sentinel published excerpts from the CRI report below: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/os-lk-class-size-report-released-20140506,0,3781557.story My original May 5th article and opinions you WON'T find in the Daily Commercial (The Orlando Sentinel has stopped most coverage of Lake County schools): Today (May 5th), the Lake County School District had a 1pm workshop, which means they discuss several items, but can't vote or make official decisions. This is where the good stuff occurs - not at the evening meetings. This is a shorter, edited version of a summary I sent to FiscalRangers readers: - The School Board today had several important things on the Workshop agenda, and some were postponed. The agenda is attached (but items 3.04, 3.06 & 3.07 were postponed). I was at the meeting and recorded it on video but it may take 1-2 days to upload it. Download the Agenda 2014 05 05 The agenda items that seemed important to me were: - Agenda item 3.01 - CRI Report – An independent audit firm reviewed class size reduction problems at the... Read more →

Florida Dept. of Education Budget Blunder costs local School Districts $51-million.

Tavares, FL (Lake County, FL) Monday, Apr. 21, 2014 by Vance Jochim www.FiscalRangers.com Pam Stewart (center), head of the Florida Dept. of Education, should be held accountable for this $51-million budget blunder. School Districts in Florida have been fiscally shafted by the Florida Dept. of Education to the tune of $51-million. (FLDOE). Lake County Schools received a surprise cut in budgeted Florida revenues of $916,000. Note: I will be seeking more information on this, and will post updated to THIS page. Update Apr. 23, 2014 - Orlando's Channel 9 TV reporter Berndt Petersen picked up this story and interviewed me: http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/video-lake-county-schools-wont-get-expected-1m/vCYKrQ/ This story was also published on the national news service, WatchDogWire here: http://watchdogwire.com/florida/2014/04/22/fl-budget-blunder-costs-local-school-districts-51-million/ and on April 24th, it was published in the Daily Commercial: http://www.dailycommercial.com/news/article_465a42d2-2b3e-5e4d-83a0-f875e09cecdd.html#.U1j_pxlp3_o.facebook What did happen? How did Lake County get cut $916,000 and all Florida schools get cut $51-million? Monday night, April 21, 2014, around 5:30 pm, the CFO of the Lake County School District told Lake County School District Board members their CURRENT year budgeted revenues from the State of Florida were being chopped by $916,000 over the next two months, and all 67 Florida School Districts were getting surprise, immediate revenue cuts totaling $51-million.... Read more →

Property Rights Reduced by Lake County, FL Centrally Planned Land Development

Lake County, Florida's Board of Commissioners is considering a New Urbanism "South Lake Sector Plan" development where government planners will damage property rights and decide which land owners get increased value for development rights versus losing property owners who will be locked into Agricultural or Environmentalist demanded Conservation areas of much lower value for the future. Read more →

FiscalRangers Alert: Will Lake County, FL Board Throw $2-million More Into Expensive Cagan's Crossings Library?

Tavares, FL - Monday, Feb. 10, 2014 Tomorrow, the Lake County Board is being asked to approve, WITHOUT DISCUSSION, the start of a process to use $200,000 of library impact fees to design the total $2.2-million build out of the second floor of a library in South Lake County for unstated purposes. Those purposes may be to develop services that compete with tax paying businesses. The issue is in tab 8 of the "consent agenda" which means the Board will approve it without discussing it in public at the hearing. Lake County, FL has a very expensive library built in Cagan's Crossings, in the very south east corner of Lake County and next to Polk, Osceola & Orange County. Various agreements exist/ed to allow residents of other counties to use the libraries, but as far as I know, Lake County paid for it. Here is the link to the Cagan's Crossing library page: http://www.lakeline.lib.fl.us/libraries/cagan_crossings_community_library.aspx That is the library where Polk County agreed to contribute annually towards library expenses, then welched, causing the Library Dept. to reduce staff. It is my understanding that Polk County HAS no libraries, thus I assume they do not have a Library Impact fee, but Lake... Read more →

Nightmare of Obamacare Presentation by Dr. Tim Moore

Tavares, FL - Nov. 4, 2013 Dr. Tim Moore, a cardivascular surgeon who owns a surgery clinic in Leesburg, FL gave at talk on the "Nightmare of Obamacare" to residents and visitors at the Royal Highlands retirement community in Leesburg, FL on Nov. 4, 2013. Moore's talk is blunt and covers all the Obama lies and the restrictions and true cost analysis that will affect both working and retired folks, so this is a good video and/or Powerpoint to watch, with many researched facts. We have both the Powerpoint and the video. Download Nightmare of Obamacare 2013 <<<< This is the Powerpoint You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSI14Q5OF2I Read the video description also. The best way to watch it is to open a window with the Powerpoint and then another window with the video and click through the Powerpoint as Dr. Moore discusses each. We apologize for the sound, but the microphone was faulty and the hall created an echo due to the placement of the speakers (not under our control). Another version of the video might be uploaded later if we can get it from the owner. Read more →

Emergency Vehicle Delay in Volusia County Shows Weaknesses in Sheriff Run Dispatch Group

Tavares, FL (Lake County) - Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013 by Vance Jochim [email protected] An emergency vehicle in Volusia County took 15 minutes to reach a guy who died before they reached him. They were dispatched by a central Sheriff run dispatching department. A trainee dispatcher somehow gave the wrong instructions to the Ambulance drivers. Apparently the problem was inability of the caller to 911 to explain what address he was at. The trainee then sent the ambulance to an address 3-miles away. This article is hitting Facebook distributions because the guy that died was a friend of a well known watchdog blogger in Volusia County. http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20131009/NEWS/131009459/1040?p=1&tc=pg This should be sent to the Lake County emergency dispatch operations managers (in cities as well). I have had a related problem with Fire dispatch in Lake County because I called to report a fire and I am on the border of Lake County and Tavares, and had to go through confirming exact addresses and being re-routed from one dispatch to another. It was only an electrical junction box fire, but the issue was quite confusing and service delayed while the dispatchers worked out who was responsible so they could sent the correct fire... Read more →

Early Alert: Lake County Commissioner Campione Discusses Pending Garbage Contract Snafu & Other Issues - ON Video

Tavares, FL - August 23, 2013 Lake County Commissioner and Chair of the Board Leslie Campione spoke at last night's meeting of the South Lake County 912 Project group in Clermont, FL. She covered several topics, but the major issue was the controversial new contracts approved at the last Lake County Board meeting on August 13 by 4 of the 5 Board members for waste (garbage) pickup and disposal vendors. You can see the earlier video of the August 13 Board meeting discussion HERE – go to 1:06 on the video, or scroll down the “Event Bookmarks” to item 13 and click it to jump to that discussion (note the County website for meeting agendas and videos is EXTREMELY confusing. The discussion issue was agenda tab number 34 on the printed agenda, but the “Bookmarks” list for videos doesn’t use the same numbering systems and shows it under Event 13) . She also talked about impact fee decisions and other topics. This is an early alert – I will be posting a more widely distributed article later today after I review the referenced videos again. As a former corporate internal auditor, I always used to watch for purchasing contracts that... Read more →

Lake County Publishes Audit of Controversial Lake County "House of Horrors" Historical Society

Tavares, FL - Thursday, Apr. 25, 2013 - Lake County, FL by Vance Jochim - updates will be added as received. Update: Apr. 29th - Historical elections were held and a new slate was elected and no gunfights broke out - update posted soon on this blog in separate posting. Update Apr. 26th - see details below about today's meetings for elections. An earlier version of this article was also published on the national newswire service WatchdogWire.com HERE. Does Lake County, FL have a HOUSE of HORRORS instead of a Lake County History Museum? A new audit indicates that might be the case, and it is a House of Mis-Management Horrors right here in Lake County. The Lake County Board of Commissioners requested that the Court Clerk's Audit Office audit the operations and financial records of the Lake County Historical Society which manages the Lake County History Museum under an agreement with the County. It was published today in order to be available before tomorrow's April 26th Historical Society Board Meeting. It is a GOOD audit report indicating an appalling situation where many poor or illegal procedures are used. No inventory exists anywhere of an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 items... Read more →

Are the Minneola, FL City Council AND Local Land Developers Trying to Rip Off Local Taxpayers?

Tavares, FL - Monday, March 25,2013 Commentary by Vance Jochim, www.FiscalRangers.com - Updates are added, mostly at the bottom, as we get them. This is written from the standpoint of being a taxpayer advocate, and also questioning why a city should be allowed to divert County property tax revenue to their own projects. Lake County, FL property owners and City of Minneola property owners better hold on to their wallet because in my opinion, a tax grab is being planned to subsidize four major real estate developers in the Minneola area. Basically, they are pushing through a Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) which siphons property taxes from the development area future property taxes to re-pay the State of Florida $15-million of a $30-million Florida Turnpike Interchange in Minneola. The Interchange is expected to increase the ability of land owners and developers to sell 8,000 homes in Minneola with 23,000 residents. However, ALL County taxpayers will be expected to provide normal County services like Animal Services, Libraries etc. to those new homeowners while 5-mills of County property taxes are used to pay their bonds instead of going to the Lake County General Fund for normal government services to County (not City) residents.... Read more →

Lake County Historical Society Erupts in Spat and Accusations

Tavares, FL - Saturday, Feb. 22, 2013 (After publishing this, we received some comments from Jimmy Conner which were added at the end of this article - vj). Today’s Daily Commercial broke a story about a bubbling spat between Board members of the Lake County Historical Society, but had only part of the story. I have been informed of this story since last weekend, but was waiting for some resolution since not all facts could be confirmed. Read their story first. http://www.dailycommercial.com/News/LakeCounty/23Feb2013society There are two opposing groups on the 18 (?) member Board. One supports the Office Manager and may have launched the accusations against the President and Vice President to offset the planned investigation by the other group wanting a review of the Office Manager spending and timekeeping practices. Thursday, key members of the Board met with Court Clerk Neil Kelly because the Society is funded by County funds (about $20,000 (?)) and Kelly acts as Treasurer. The Society is funded with County funds, thus indicating a need for officials to get involved. However I called County Board member Jimmy Conner who is the County Board liaison to the Society, and he said this is an “internal dispute” and... Read more →

Volusia County Schools Could Save $17-million by Outsourcing Custodial Services

Tavares, FL - Feb. 11, 2013 by Vance Jochim The School District in Volusia County FL lost a referendum last year to raise annual property taxes by $26-million, so they are hunting for every idea to reduce costs since revenues are down. One method is outsourcing, and they are seriously considering outsourcing of custodial services to reduce costs and save an estimated $17-million. The article below brings up a number of outsourcing examples. One major reason is the high health and pension costs for workers who could be outsourced. Meanwhile, here in Lake County FL, there is much talk of running out of money, but no discussion yet on obtaining outsourcing proposals for services like custodions, food service, etc. Many of the employees subject to similar outsourcing proposals are members of the SEIU Union. So, you might wonder why School Board member Rosanne Brandeburg took about $12,000 in contributions from SEIU and Teacher's unions for her recent re-election campaign. http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20130211/OPINION/302089949/1028?Title=Schools-wise-to-consider-outsourcing-some-services Note: I have been laid off three times in corporate downsizings, buyouts and mergers, so Government employees need to be competitive with the private world. Read more →

Bravo to Citizen Fighting City Hall

This is an example of a Sebring, FL citizen fighting to stop a local city government blunder. We hope she prevails. http://www.newssun.com/Opinion/edt-011313 vj From NewsSun.com Admiration for a citizen standing up to power Some of you may be tired of reading News-Sun stories about Gingerlee Mitchelllindo's fight with the city of Sebring. She is trying to save her retention wall. We, on the other hand, not only think our coverage is warranted, we think the community should be paying attention, even getting involved. To briefly recap: Mitchelllindo's property, a small single house, is opposite the Sebring Middle School at 503 Center Ave. In 2009, with the construction of Sebring Parkway Part II, Center Avenue was reconfigured and widened for a safer entrance into the middle school and to feed into the Parkway. Properties along the affected areas were surveyed. As a result of the survey, the city judged Mitchelllindo's retaining wall encroached on the city's right-of-way by about a foot. However, when succeeding surveys were done, none of the results were exactly the same. Mitchelllindo insists when she built the wall in 1996, she stayed within the line set by the surveyor, who happened to be Buddy Whitlock. Whitlock went... Read more →

Stupid Government Mistakes: Polk County overcharges residents for garbage pickups by $1.46-million

Jan 14, 2013 - Tavares, FL Apparently, starting seven years ago, Polk County, FL staff used an incorrect method that resulted in providing incorrect, sometimes vacant addresses for garbage pickup to the local waste services firm they had on contract. This blunder went on for seven years, and the County overcharged residents $1.46-million over the 7 years, and then paid the funds to the waste services firm. Now the County is trying to get the waste provider to pay back the funds even though the County made the mistake.Teh Board is trying to blame the vendor for the issue, but that is like trying to get an employee to pay back excess paychecks due to a blunder by staff, especially 7 years later. My experience as an internal audit manager for 18 years is that both government and companies many times has low level staff make decisions without oversight or performance audits and these things go on for years. At Nissan Motor Corp., staff used the wrong formula to set reserves for auto warranties, and they over collected the reserves by $1-million. Once the mistake was found by internal audit, that $1-million went right to the "bottom line". Good luck...... Read more →

Orlando CFO Screws Up and Awards 8.7-million Contract WITHOUT Competitive Bidding

Tavares, lake County, FL - Thursday, Dec. 20,2012 The City of Orlando CFO, Rebecca Sutton, signed a major software contract for $8.7-million without requiring any bids on the new software project. Then she flew with several other staff members to Las Vegas using $20,000 in City funds to announce the contract at the software developer's conference. All this without any bidding. The Orlando Sentinel provided many details HERE. (Note - READ the comments, which are more blunt than I am). I was a software developer for seven years, and before that I was an internal audit manager in large firms like Nissan, ARCO (the oil company) and the County of Los Angeles. A big red flag to an auditor is lack of competitive bidding, called sole sourcing, for large contracts. The Orlando CFO completely skipped that process because some sales people got to her and convinced her there was no need for competitive bidding. YOU NEVER DO THAT IF YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL. You always go through the bidding for several reasons: - The competitors ask questions and flush out details or issues you did not consider. Picking just one vendor allows them to snow you with only favorable features... Read more →

British Government Bidding Fiasco Provides Lessons for All Government Staff & Officials

British government staff screwed up the bidding process so much for operating a privatized train line that several leaders and staff were fired and the government had to repay four bidders about $60-million in bidding costs they lost. England has privatized their rail system and recently held high stakes bidding for the firm that would operate a major west coast line. Apparently, Richard Branson's Virgin Brand was running it at the time and but lost the contract bidding to renew their operations contract. Branson filed a protest citing problems with the way the bid ranking was calculated, and it turned out he was right. Apparently the method used to score winning bids was faulty and didn't include factors for inflation and accurate methods of forecasting growth in rail traffic. It was so bad that several staff and leaders were fired. A quote in one article said the government needs to get procurement specialists at the same level as the business world. This brings me to recite my mantra - the public deserves the same quality management in government agencies as used in major corporations, and doesn't always get it. That is why it is imperative to elect officials with large... Read more →

Lake County School Lunch Programs Fail to Track Waste & Food Thrown Out

Tavares, FL - Oct. 1, 2012 The Lake County School District Board recently received an annual update on School Lunch programs from the head of the school food programs, Gary Dodds. Most of the food is for kids who get free lunch funded by Federal funds. However, Michelle Obama pushed through a "healthy foods" initiatives which among other things, mandates that each kids MUST be GIVEN fruit and vegetables, even if they don't want it, and the kids throw the food out. Dodds doesn't want to measure the waste. Why is it that government won't measure waste or allocate enough funds to track waste AND take action to fix it? You can read today's Orlando Sentinel article about the School food program presentation and Board discussions about food that the kids are throwing out. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-school-food-waste-20120930,0,1993800.story Here are my comments submitted online below the article: I attended the Lake County Board meeting where this was brought up, just like a year ago, when Gary Dodds gave his annual update on school food. As a taxpayer, I am aggravated at Dodd's ambivalence over tracking wasted food - it could be done on a sampling basis either by weighing and counting trash cans... Read more →

FiscalRangers Opinion on the $1.2-million Lake County Investment in Regional Marketing Group

Update: We updated the link to the Fox Orlando interview of our opinion, also wrote more on this issue and were interviewed by Channel 9 two days later - look for a later July 2 article on this blog. But read this one first. Tavares, FL - June 29, 2012 by Vance Jochim, FiscalRangers.com I believe that the Lake County Board needs to sever relations with the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission (MOEDC) and spend the $288,000 budget on more productive areas. I am not against Economic Development funding, but I am against a taxpayer funded regional agency that uses, for example, a marketing program that only gets 138% return based upon projected TEN year data for Lake County when the total projected (not real) returns for all four covered counties gets an average of 457% return. And, then you find Lake County is paying MORE per capita than other counties, and that the "return on investment" calculation is not based on real data. Read below and see what I mean. Fox Orlando 35 had a short video segment Wednesday where reporter Tracy Jacim interviewed me about thisissue. You can find it here: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/video?clipId=7449297&autostart=true But it is hard to explain... Read more →

Boca Raton Watchdog Group Complains about Excessive Firefighter Benefits & Pensions

Tavares, FL It seems that the CITY of Boca Raton, FL (not County) is slipping into heavy deficits, and like Lake County, the elected officials are ignoring the steep costs of pension and benefits for employees. In this case a new watchdog group was formed to disclose facts about excessive pensions and benefits and wages for city firefighters and EMS employees. We also added a link at the bottom of this posting to a story about how San Diego and San Jose referendums were passed to drastically reduce government employee pensions costs. Here is the Boca Raton story: http://www.bizpacreview.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.details&ArticleId=738070&returnTo=dale-king And, attached below is a VERY GOOD graphic 12 page Powerpoint that clearly shows the effects of excessive pensions and benefits for the firefighters. Watch the Powerpoint first - it is very good, then read the story. This is very clear analysis that should be an example of the type of visual analysis required of EVERY government agency about the effects of their pension, wages & and benefits. Download 2012_BCFRGoalSetting AND, here is a story how both San Diego and San Jose citizens pushed through referendums to drastically reduce government employee pensions. One city eliminated "pension spiking" which is the common... Read more →

Lessons for Lake County? Georgia City of 100,000 Outsources EVERYthing and is NOT broke.

Tavares, FL - May 21, 2012 by Vance Jochim Here is a great video from the Florida Tea party network about Sandy Springs, GA, population 100,000 (bigger than the Villages), which started outsourcing all their programs in 2005 after incorporating as a new city in Fulton County, GA, and now has NO debt. Watch the EIGHT minute video first, then return for my comments. The video was created by Reason.org which is a Libertarian think tank in California. Then ask your Lake County officials why they are not examining outsourcing services, and why unincorporated Sorrento - Mt. Plymouth is not incorporating as a city and outsourcing services? http://theteapartynetwork.org/2012/05/a-great-vision-of-municipal-government/ This city was initially a large unincorporated area in Fulton County, GA, and was taxed by the County for funds spent elsewherein the County. The County rarely paved or repaired roads. Democrats controlled the legislature and prevented Sandy Springs from incorporating as a city until 2005 when Republicans took control and allowed the City of Sandy Springs to be established. So, this was all done since 2005. "Companies are better than managing projects than government, and one contractor provided services for $25-million vs $50-million if run by the county government." Sandy Springs... Read more →

Lake County, FL Sheriff IT System HACKED and data stolen

The Lake County Sheriff's Dept was hacked by people who downloaded about 40gb of files from the Sheriff's servers. That is not a good indicator of their knowledge about computer security. As a former corporate internal auditor and certified information systems auditor, my observation is most law enforcement departments (Police & Sheriff) are still stuck in focusing on physical crimes using kinesthetic staff, and not focusing on intellectual crimes requiring people with technical degrees. This is the result. I would recommend the Sheriff create an anti-hacking & IT Controls committee of volunteers, much like the County Board and School Board have committees, and have them review both internal IT practices and ability to act when local IT crimes are reported. I tried contacting the Sheriff's public information officer, but no one answered either phone. However, the articles below give a good overview of the incident. http://www.dailycommercial.com/News/LakeCounty/050212hacking http://www.cfnews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2012/4/30/hackers_target_lake_.html http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-lk-sheriff-office-hacked-20120430,0,1956813.story 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 →

Miami-Dade Inspector General Rebukes Jackson Health System for Failed Contractor Procedures

Once again, another Florida Hospital, Jackson Health Systems, screwed up again. According to their local County Inspector General, they awarded sole source contracts for "emergency venitlation and air conditioning" work to a contract without competitive bids. They awarded $1.7-million in contracts to CT Mechanical, which then submitted vague lump sum invoices and failed to get building permits on 17 projects. http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/14/2454079/inspector-general-criticizes-jackson.html This all happened while they already had two local businesses approved for the work. The Jackson Health Systems staff claimed the work was only awarded to CT Mechanical because Jackson was so poor in paying vendors that few would do the work for them. Anyway, this shows that a Inspector General is what is needed to unveil these types of practices, and Lake County does NOT have one. Since our own North Lake County Hospital District gives $9-12 million to three local hospitals without any spending rules or internal audits (they have financial audits, which are different), the hospitals could be doing the same thing and the taxpayers would not have a clue. Watch this blog for updates on the North Lake County Hospital District. And, probably more on Jackson Health, since they seem to have a screwup about... Read more →

Excessive Salaries of North Lake Hospitals Compared to Orlando Expressway Authority

Tavares, FL - Oct. 8, 2011 - Actually, we aren't comparing the salaries, but discussing the relevancy of high salaries paid to managers running the two local Hospitals, Leesburg and Waterman, when taxpayers are asked to subsidize their non-profit PRIVATE corporations with $8-12-million of taxpayer funds. The North Lake County Hospital District extracts $8-12 million per year from local property owners for corporate welfare payments to the Hospitals, but there are no salary caps until the hospitals give up the 40 year subsidies. Only two hospitals(a third gets a small share) receive the hospital, while all other local clinics that provide similar services have no ability to apply for or receive payments, which is anti-competitive. Efforts are underway by Florida state Rep. Larry Metz to revamp the regulations for the District to define spending rules, remove the "entitlement" feature of only giving the money to two hospitals (which they claim is for indigent care, but no rules specify that) rather than all clinics providing such services, and also require the first ever referendum and voter approval on the tax for many taxpayers. We have advocated that the Board members of the District, and the Florida regulations establishing the District should... Read more →

Florida Convenes Government Efficiency Task Force & Some Appointments are Made

Tavares, FL - July 30, 2011 - In 2007, the Florida legislature established a Government Efficiency Task Force that meets only once every four years. It seems it meets the first year AFTER a Governor election is held. The 15 member panel is made up of five appointments from the Governor, five from the Speaker of the House, and five from the President of the Florida Senate. There are also many other committee appointments listed at the links at the end of this article. So. this week, FL Governor Rick Scott appointed five members to the Committee as indicated in his press release HERE. n I looked at the brief backgrounds of the five appointees, and three are from government or professions that have nothing to do with improving efficiency. However, Orlando fiscal conservative Matt Falconer says on his Facebook page that he was appointed by the Speaker of the House, which is a good thing. He wrote a book on reducing government costs. HERE is an older background article on the Task Force. And, here is a 2006 FL Senate research report on the formation of the Committee, and it has some good info on what other states have... Read more →

What Should Local Voters do When their Elected Officials Have no Initiative?

Tavares, FL - June 24, 2011 - I went to a meeting recently where about 20 concerned local residents (not the Tea Party) were gathered to discuss why their area was not improving economically. Their businesses were slowly declining and nothing much was happening. There was a lot of griping about the lack of action by the local elected officials and the manager of their local area (not the County). After lots of discussion, they came to the conclusion their elected officials were part of the problem by not pushing the manager to establish measurable economic development objectives and implement them. It seems that one local high flying city does that, and their success is aggravating others without positive economic leadership. As always, I threw in my suggestion that foreclosures were a big part of the problem. Since I have not been able (yet) to get the Lake County County Commissioners to set up an action plan, I suggested this group add it to their list. I think it got lost somewhere during the discussion about trees. But, there were some heavy hitters from local bigger businesses, and the consensus resulted in the plan to do a survey and get... Read more →

Dick Morris: Inflation is Coming, and I Agree Obama & Democrats Should be Blamed

The Federal government now borrows $40-BILLION per week to pay interest on all the debt they have approved. When someone says there is a $13-TRILLION or so deficit, that means the Feds have sold debt and agreed to pay interest to GET all that money. OR, they PRINTED new money which increases the money supply, which causes inflation. Obama and the Democrats have done both. And, as interest goes up, I am betting much of the debt has cost of living escalators, so interest due to China and other buyers of US bonds and debt instruments will rise as interest rates rise. I lived through the last great inflation bubble when President Jimmy Carter ran up costs and implemented all those liberal programs that run up inflation. That was when I thought I had a GOOD DEAL buying a house at 9.5% interest rates, and then the rates went up to almost 20% due to inflation. Recently, I have watched Obama implementing many inflation causing practices, including "printing money", and excessive borrowing money to fund all his social programs. Now, inflation is starting to hit us, not only due to unrest in oil producing countries, but subsidizing food crops like... Read more →

Understanding Local Corporate Welfare & Identifying True Fiscal Conservatives

Tavares, FL - April 13, 2011 - Today, I gave a presentation at the Lake Federation Republican Women's Club in Tavares. It was on these two topics: - Understanding Corporate Welfare and Local Lake County Examples - Identifying Behaviors of True Fiscal Conservatives (vs liberals or Republicans in Name Only). Attached is the Powerpoint slide presentation. It has over 20 specific fiscal conservative actions that I recommend for elected officials to show they actually are fiscal conservatives. Download 2011-04-13 LFRWC Preso Enjoy. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers AT Comcast DOT net Read more →

Florida Government Agencies should be Mandated to Use Charts Like This

Tavares, FL - Apr. 11, 2011 - In Lake County, FL , I have been watching union negotiations for wages. I have been preaching for maybe two years that the Administration and Board of the Lake County School District (and the Board of the County Commissioners) should develop statistics like the chart referenced on the link below. http://thathero.com/2011/04/11/oea-shared-sacrifice/ It is about Ohio wage patterns, and shows average wages of both union and private industry workers. Such charts should be mandatory for use when any government agency starts setting wage and benefits for government workers. Now, the chart is for Ohio, which is not a right to work State (Florida is), so the disparities between union and private wages are larger than you would find in Florida, but the idea is that no goverment elected officials should approve any wage and benefit increases without comparing trends like this, and for unemployment, benefits, pensions, etc. Government employees need to be paid within reason, and not excessively. vj Read more →

Chicago Wastes $18-million a year on Featherbedding Union Truck Drivers

The article below gives a good example why the City of Chicago has a reputation for being corrupt and wasteful. Their Inspector General found there were over 200 union truck drivers costing $90,000 per year who drove construction crews to work sites, then sat and did nothing (just like the guy in the hammock) until they returned the crew to their offices at the end of the day. This was instead of having one of the crew drive a truck, which would eliminate the need for the $18-million in truck drivers. And, apparently there have been previous scandals in Chicago, such as garbage collection crews given light collection routes, such that they goofed off 25% of the time. And, keep in mind they have REALLY strong union contracts, and are NOT in a right to work state. I hope local Lake County managers are keeping a better eye on how their staff is used than Chicago does. (I have been told of people watching several government workers arrive in separate agency trucks at a worksite...). vj Inspector General: City wastes $18 million a year on truck driver By Fran Spielman - City Hall Reporter - [email protected] Last Modified: Mar 31,... 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 →

When will Lake County, Cities & School District Integrate Purchasing Efforts?

Tavares, Lake County, FL: The picture at left shows a typical paperwork based purchasing process - and we ask: do we in Lake County need to repeat that convoluted process with duplicative and separate systems (and several may be manual, not computerized) in each Lake County government Agency? Why don't they all share a single, internet based purchasing system running in the "internet cloud"? Why don't they consolidate County wide purchases to achieve economies of scale like corporations do on a daily basis? Local government purchasing departments have an annual fair for vendors to talk to representatives from the purchasing departments of many local Lake County agencies. I have attended the last two. I registered as a vendor (consulting) at the first fair, but never heard anything for about a year, but now I get a notice about once every two months for a request for proposal that is not relevant. The "leaders" of the purchasing fair created a "Pooled Purchasing" website called "Procurement Offices of LAKE" (POOL) within the Lake County website at http://pool.lakecountyfl.gov/ , and it is listed on the County's "Doing Business in Lake County" website. BUT, if you look at it, it hasn't been updated at... Read more →

Corporations are Passing More of Health Insurance Costs to Employees

So, who did the Democrat voters think would pay for THEIR health insurance when they voted for Obama and supported Obamacare? Well, the Wall St. Journal says now corporate employers are passing more of the cost increases on to employees, rather than split the cost increases. Now local, state and federal government agencies need to do the same. The day is over when government employees should get a higher subsidy for health insurance than employees of businesses. Favorite quote: Cost shifting has become the norm for many of the roughly 160 million Americans who receive health insurance through an employer. In the latest survey, 17% of workers at large firms had deductibles over $1,000, compared with 6% who paid that amount before their insurer started to pick up the bill in 2006. At small firms, nearly half of workers had deductibles that high this year, compared with 16% four years ago. vj from the Wall St. Journal HERE Employers Sharply Raise Workers' Share of Health Costs By AVERY JOHNSON Employers passed health-insurance costs onto employees at a sharply higher rate this year, and businesses' premiums grew more slowly than they have in a decade, according to an annual survey of... Read more →

California City to repay HUD $1.3-million due to Improper Use of Federal Affordable Housing Grant

Guest what - Lake County has an affordable housing grant - I hope they are better at following the rules than this city, Montebello, California, which LIED about the project being complete when construction had not even started. One reason to worry is that Lake's Board of County Commissioners make it very hard for the separate Auditor in the Court Clerk's office to do performance audits of programs, AND they don't have their own controller type person to ensure accurate accounting is used. Yes, they have a budget manager, but not a Controller. The accounting is done separately in the Court Clerk's department, and their manager does not exercise Controller functions over the BCC. Remember the RECENT problems with the SHIP program (grants to remodel houses of poor people). That got in the news when the manager of the program was letting relatives and criminals get the loans? However, another issue could also be the cause in Montebello - many cities in that area are now run by Mexican immigrants, and they hire their own relatives to do much of the work in the cities. I used to live in Southern California. The hispanic officials are not educated and do... Read more →

Lake County Commissioners NEED to CLEARLY Define future regulatory and litigation costs for Comp Plan

The Lake County, FL County Board of Commissioners will be voting Tuesday morning to approve a new and revised "Comp Plan" that is over 350 pages of new regulations affecting County zoning laws, rights of property owners, and land use regulations. Think of it as a GIANT wish list for environmentalists who want to restrict property rights by implementing 350 pages of regulations while ignoring the costs of implementation. There is an uproar between developers who don't want land use regulations, property owners who don't want new environmental restrictions on the use of their land, and environmentalists who want to restrict various uses to "protect the environment" etc. But, I am not writing here about those issues - there are enough people on both sides who will be at the Tuesday 9am meeting to provide public input to the Board. My concern is that there is inadequate information about the potential implementation and future litigation costs related to those 350 pages of regulations. Below is the memo I just sent to the Board today that explains these issues. You thought the Niagara Water legal blunders were bad... just wait until the County cannot keep up with required regulatory compliance and... Read more →

California's Orange County Government Software Error Results in $228-million Error

This staff error in California is why no one has respect for local government agencies, elected officials or staff. Apparently, the Orange County, California government staff changed actuarial software in 2003, and they did not implement an audit to verify the new results from the software. The software was used to calculate the amount of funds the County should invest to pay for future pension costs of current employees. As a result of a programming error, the software UNDER-calculated the funds needed to fund their pensions since that date. The resulting error means they have to find another $228-million NOW to offset the errors over the past few years. The problem was reported to the County Board on April 12, which coincidentally is two days before the 1912 anniversery of the sinking of the Titanic. (due to my research). Favorite quote: "That’s on top of the county’s existing unfunded pension liability of about $3.1 billion." He said OCERS needs to be more meticulous about auditing its books. “What OCERS should be doing about every five years is auditing their actuary to make sure the actuary is coming up with the right numbers,” Moorlach said. My own experience at Nissan Motor... Read more →

Lake County Sheriff Should Request Performance Audits to Prevent $600,000 Problems Like in Maryland

We all like to think that police and sheriff departments are free from fraud, but in Maryland's Montgomery County (Annapolis), the County Inspector General (we don't have one in Lake County) found that questionable training programs for Sheriff and police employees cost the County $600,000 because they avoided central procurement systems and were issued without bid to companies that "had ties" to county police officers. As described in the Washington Post article below, it seemed the connected training firms enticed police and sheriff employees to sign up for courses of questionable quality by offering 80% or so off on brand name handguns like Glocks (see pictures), and then billed the county for invoices up to $59,000. But, I assume the training was also on employee time, so the cost was both time and the invoiced cost. This is the type of thing that can happen in ANY type of department, but here, it was the police and sheriff employees that incurred the questionable charges. Fortunately, the poor training programs were "outed" by the local Sheriff, which then resulted in an investigation by the Inspector General. We don't have an inspector general in Lake County. The "County Auditor" does not have... Read more →

Jimmy Conner Investigation Machine Rolls on in Lake County - Investigation of Unexpected $1.6 Million in Maintenance Costs

Lake County, Florida - Feb. 25, 2010 - Lake County Commissioner Jimmy Conner (Florida) is the only one awake and asking questions about fiscal issues in the Board Meetings - he has been asking tougher questions than "why are we paying for new DVD's for libraries" these days. His short article is at the bottom of this page. I go to most Board meetings, and you really wonder whether 3 of the Commissioners, including Linda Stewart and Elaine Renick EVER READ the agenda backup documents regarding fiscal issues, or even understand the concept of controlling costs like any $400-million corporation would. This is especially important when they don't have a Controller, and the interim County Manager is an attorney, not a professional Administrator. In this case, Jimmy was correct to ask for an investigation how the County bought a $35-million radio system without budgeting for the annual maintenance charges, estimated to be $1.6-million. One of the fiscal weaknesses of government "fund accounting" systems used by the County as well as the School District is that they may have separate funding for capital expenditures and thus they may tend to approve them without a process to ALSO budget for maintenance or... Read more →

Notes from Ralph Smith's Lake County Radio Show today - Jan 20 - Mt. Dora Pension Issues & Leesburg Veteran's Memorial

Tavares/Eustis, Florida - Wed., Jan. 20, 2010: Ralphs local show in on AM790 WLBE each Wed at 11am to noon, and he covers mostly conservative political issues. The current website for WLBE, which also provides online recordings of shows, is at www.WLBE.org . Todays show: Guests are from Mt. Dora City Commission and from the Leesburg Veteran's Memorial - Great news - the Republican won the Senate seat race in Massachusetts to replace Edward Kennedy, which changes the ratio of Dems to Republicans in the Senate from 60 / 40 to 59 / 41, which eliminates the ability of the Dems to ram laws through the Senate without involving any Republicans in the issue. First Half Hour - Guest was Mt. Dora Councilman Jim Eppich Note: If you are concerned about excessive government spending, I recommend you listen to the first 20 minutes of this show by going to the AM790 WLBE website "past shows" and listening to the recording for Jan. 20 at 11am. AT THIS WLBE website (which does NOT show up in Google searches). - Ralph introduced Mount Dora Councilman Jim Eppich who won in a tightly contested race. He is a CPA and former CFO of... Read more →