Blog note: this piece references a 2017-18 grand jury report.
Folks wisely employ accountants, tax advisors and business managers in order to be certain their hard-earned resources are safe and in good hands.
Similarly, the management of our tax dollars is given over to elected or appointed officials. These managers are given this money in trust. We hope and assume these people are competent, trustworthy and aggressive in executing their obligations.
An election was held June 5 in which some very significant local offices were aggressively sought. One of them, County Auditor/Controller, is not very glamorous, nor did it attract much voter attention. That is unfortunate, for the Auditor is the manager of our tax dollars, our local services, our financial future.
Of the two candidates for Auditor, the one who lost outlined many of the flaws and dangers manifest in the current management of our money. She lost the election to the incumbent. It is also important to note the incumbent is a favorite of the three South County supervisors. Over the years, this cabal has led the county, slipping and sliding, into a variety of financial disasters.
That election is over, and the results allow things to stand as they were — same incompetent people, same shameful lack of attention to the essential responsibilities of the office.
A recent scandal revealed that a county employee had embezzled $2 million over a 10-year period. During that 10-year period, the Auditor’s Department had no mechanism to prevent or detect the fraud. The embezzler is now in jail. The Auditor is now professing to create safeguards a capable and professional executive would have put in place years ago.
Even the Board of Supervisors has become ensnared in this mess. Consider that of the five supervisors, there is only one with significant business experience, and only two that on April 10 abstained from a vote granting a $750,000 contract to the architect of the inadequate financial management system, a company that the incumbent previously co-owned. A company that received more than $1 million in county contracts between 2005 and 2016. A company in which the incumbent had a significant ownership interest during this same period of years. This is the definition of a conflict of interest.
Not surprisingly, the civil grand jury issued a report that eviscerated the Auditor. In a multi-point attack on the county’s financial controls, the very same warnings issued prior to the election were reiterated by the grand jury with detailed and numerous recommendations and observations of the incompetence of the current Auditor administration and the failures of the Board of Supervisors.
I urge you to read the grand jury’s report.
Consider the following, excerpted from that report:
“… the 2017/18 Santa Barbara County Jury found significant residual risks to the County’s finances … in applying guidelines for financial management, especially those on internal controls, lack of knowledge of financial management among senior staff, and in the use of an outdated and incomplete financial management system. … Many of these failures have contributed to a $2 million embezzlement by a County of Santa Barbara employee …”
Of the two candidates for the Auditor office, the one who lost outlined many of the risks and dangers in the current management of county assets as highlighted by the aforementioned grand jury report.
Add to this mess the county’s tremendous unfunded liabilities in excess of $1 billion. Santa Barbara County’s pension contribution rates have risen substantially since 2007.
Santa Barbara is broke. But three South County supervisors tell us all is very well. It’s not well.
July 7, 2018
Santa Maria Times
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