Audit

UPDATE: More like 15 months w/o internal auditing

UPDATE: Just for clarification, what I posted here are the WORDS of the COMMITTEE members, they are NOT mine. Just watch the video. Also, in NO WAY do I hold the city internal audit employees accountable for what ‘hasn’t been being done’. They have had to deal with a lack of a leadership, and that’s on the committee, as they stated in the video.

I stand corrected about what I said at Public Input the other night at city council. I guess a city councilor said I misspoke the other night by saying we went 9 months w/o internal auditing, and they were right. After watching the audit meeting (Dec 3, 2018 meeting, BELOW, FF: 1:20:00) it will be more like 15 months before we have a fully functional audit department.

Committee member Dean Buckneberg asks, “When was the last time we had a fully staffed audit department?” Neitzert replies, “June (2018).” Dean replies, “It will be another 9 months before we are fully staffed.”

So it seems it is even longer than I originally thought.

 

City of Sioux Falls has had no internal auditing activity for 9 months

I guess the first question I have is, what has the remaining staff been doing after they lost leadership?

Besides the fact they were collecting a pay check for doing nothing for 9 months, one of the audit committee members expressed dismay in this revelation. I think his words were, “That’s not a good thing.” Especially with the change of power at city hall, not having an internal control like that doesn’t bode well for the taxpayer.

I was glad to hear they are back on track, but this should have never happened.

Sioux Falls School District responds to Open Records request

The SFSD has responded to Bruce Danielson, Citizens for Integrity and our media partners. Bruce received a packet over the weekend from the District with bond election documents and resources. We are going to review with our partners and let you know what we find.

Stay tuned!

OPEN ENROLLMENT CHANGES

I also found the agenda interesting tonight, Item#13 is 1st Reading of stricter open enrollment rules (Which I 100% support). But I find it interesting that NONE of these changes were discussed BEFORE the election. If you look at the red notes in the exhibit you can tell they probably have been working on these changes for MONTHS. Makes you wonder if they knew showing these proposed changes to parents before the election would have affected the outcome? Slippery Petes.

(FF: 45:00)

It only took 14 years, but the audit committee is finally talking about the Phillips to the Falls fiasco

Funny how these things work? Councilor Kavanaugh was going to file charges against Mayor Munson for violating ordinance and state law for the cost overruns on Phillips to the Falls, but somehow those intentions mysteriously disappeared and Munson successfully ran for a 2nd term.

Now the Audit committee brings it up;

Read the whole thing here (Interesting we spent over $10 million to date on Phillips to the Falls): Audit-history

Not only was there internal city violations, we sat on the property for over 10 years basically holding it for a private developer without any good faith money, than we handed them TIFs. Funny how none of this was brought up when the developer was asking for the TIFs and the council approved them. But hey, we got some FREE dirt for the Levitt.

Also, and something I have known about for awhile, they are bringing back the former auditor Rich Oskol as an independent contractor (I assume) until a new auditor can be hired. Essentially double dipping (getting a city pension). Would be curious what we are paying him. They did the same thing in the city attorney’s office with a former city attorney that was retired to fill in until Stacy Koistra was hired. I don’t understand why the assistant auditors can’t handle the workload until a replacement is hired. That is how it is handled in the private sector, but hey, why am I bitching? I always say we can’t run government like private business 🙂

City Auditor realizes job is boring, quits

Well, I’m not sure if that is the real reason, but I guess the rumor going around the council chambers is she didn’t do much. Well neither did the past auditor. I have known for awhile that she was considering leaving and there was a bit of ‘drama’ going on in the auditor’s office.

So essentially now we have an auditor-less auditor’s office, and the city councilor in charge of that office, Neitzert, has requested to go to ‘management training’ to deal with them.

They need to hire a real Hard-Ass that will take the city books and turn them upside down.

I’m finding out post Bucktooth & Bowlcut that not to many things have changed.