Saturday, October 21, 2006
Huntley School District’s Outside Auditor Also Fingered by Missive Asking for Federal Probe
Not just fellow Huntley School District 158 board members and administrators come in for potential scrutiny by Federal prosecutors, but the district’s outside auditor is also a target.Attached to Superintendent John Berkey’s letter to the United State Justice Department was a 2-page memo from an unnamed board member. (Or it may have been a composite letter from more than one board member.)
Five complaints are made about the Certified Public Accountants, although intermingled are more complaints about school administrators:
1- Management letters from the District’s independent auditors for the fiscal years 2000-2005 are enclosed. They show evidence that on a monthly basis for at least 3 years, the District had not been reconciling its checking accounts to the general ledger and the most basic and normal protections against theft and fraud were not in place. It is questionable whether members of the Board of Education ever received copies of the Auditor’s management letters or whether an administrator(s) concealed the findings from Board of Education members.= = = = =
2- The audit work of one year is particularly questionable in as much as none of the normal account balancing had been done on a monthly basis. Yet per the date of the Auditor’s management letter, the audit fieldwork was completed by early August, for the fiscal year ending June 30th.
3- For 2003-2004, the District’s independent Auditor failed to materially disclose in the District’s Certified Annual Financial Report, $ Millions of lease obligations of copiers and buses.
4- The District’s independent Auditor did not record a $5 Million account receivable that was due for State Construction Grand funds in fiscal 2003-2004.
5- The most egregious example of the false claims submitted was depreciating “phantom” buses that never existed. About 75-100 “phantom” buses were depreciated in consecutive years. The District’s independent Auditor overlooked and/or did not detect the $ Millions in depreciation errors for consecutive years.
Photograph is of current outside auditor Tim Cole. In the background are Glenn Stewart and Stan Hall. I believe Cole was not the person on the account for the entire period for which the complaints are made.
Comments:
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The movie title "The Perfect Storm" could probably be applied to what has happened in D158 -except that storms don't involve human choice.
Residents would, in my opinion, be correct in shaking their heads in disbelief and disgust and asking why so many things weren't caught, corrected, or done right in the first place.
My friend thinks of D158 as some kind of earthly Bermuda Triangle.
Records disappear.
Follow up disappears.
And the quality the public was told about - also disappeared.
Perhaps some of the adults in power in this District skipped learning this song about measuring and counting?
"Inch worm, inch worm
Measuring the marigolds
Could it be, stop and see
How beautiful they are
(Chorus:)
Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two
Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
You and your arithmetic
You'll probably go far"
(First Version - written by Frank Loesser; featured in the biographical movie "Hans Christian Anderson" - http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/inchworm.htm)
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Residents would, in my opinion, be correct in shaking their heads in disbelief and disgust and asking why so many things weren't caught, corrected, or done right in the first place.
My friend thinks of D158 as some kind of earthly Bermuda Triangle.
Records disappear.
Follow up disappears.
And the quality the public was told about - also disappeared.
Perhaps some of the adults in power in this District skipped learning this song about measuring and counting?
"Inch worm, inch worm
Measuring the marigolds
Could it be, stop and see
How beautiful they are
(Chorus:)
Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two
Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
You and your arithmetic
You'll probably go far"
(First Version - written by Frank Loesser; featured in the biographical movie "Hans Christian Anderson" - http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/inchworm.htm)
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