Thursday, December 06, 2007

AUDIT: SLOPPY, NOT ILLEGAL

The results of a state audit on the City of Springfield are now public. It's not great news for the city.

State Auditor Susan Montee says the city was sloppy in keeping records, and should have planned more for the future.

It's a definite black eye for former City Manager Tom Finnie, who led Springfield during the time in question. His legacy is tarnished. Then again, Springfield once fired a city manager, Don Busch, and then named a building after him.

Downsides for the city:
•The police department couldn't account for more than $12,000 in seized money. The PD also let a major take an automatic weapon from seized property.

•The city's lobbyist was nicked for not providing proper documentation of the work he did -- work for which he billed the city more than $400,000 over two years.

•The city spent $300,000 for furniture for a police and fire training building -- but at present, they don't have a place to unpack the furniture; it's still sitting in its original packing boxes.

•Mayor Tom Carlson was a no-show for the audit release. Regardless of the reason, his absence looks bad.
The audit does not show any rampant corruption -- a disappointment to the windbags who claim the city is evil. Then again, those are the same people who believe dark spirits inhabit secret tunnels under Springfield.

2 comments:

The Libertarian Guy said...

No, nobody's going to jail over THIS audit, unlike the Municipal Court audit scenario... but it was still worth every penny spent.

The cost of this audit, and the upcoming CU report, will be about ninety thousand bucks... or, about four hours out of a one-year city budget. Small price to pay for such a thorough investigation, even if nothing illegal was uncovered, it will more than pay for itself.

Too bad Robert Leger isn't here to witness how wrong he was to oppose it.

The Libertarian Guy said...

By the way, Ron... your reporter Emily did a good job.