A Lie Here, A Lie There …
… it’s Salisbury. What do you expect.
On the 7PM news broadcast this evening on WBOC we witnessed something that should shock, but unfortunately no longer does - the Salisbury city administration lying to its citizens. Tonight Salisbury Mayor Barrie Tilghman, through City Administrator John Pick tried to brush aside new evidence of the gross incompetence of the city’s administration by claiming that $10.2 million of taxpayer funds which had not been accounted for was due to poor training in the city’s Finance Department. Pick claimed that employees thought that accounts should have been reconciled on an annual basis when they should have been reconciled monthly.
Sounds semi-plausible, doesn’t it? There’s just a couple of problems with the specious claims of Mr. Pick.
At the December 10, 2007 Salisbury Council meeting, Councilwoman Debbie Campbell claimed that the city’s inability to complete its annual audit on time was equivalent to a taxpayer not being able to balance his (or her) checkbook. Pam Oland, head of the city’s Finance Department claimed that this was ridiculous. Oland stated that a fair comparison was the city reconciling its accounts each month, which they did.
OK John, who’s lying? You? Pam? It is logically impossible for both of you to be telling the truth.
The second problem with Pick’s explanation is that IF the Finance Department thought that the accounts in question were to be reconciled on an annual basis, why didn’t they do so? We know that they did not, because the auditor states that they (the auditors) discovered the two accounts totaling $10.2 million.
We now know that Pick lied to the public on Friday, because the auditor has contradicted Pick’s statement (prior to him actually making it). As for Oland, we can’t be 100% sure. The auditor states that Oland had told them that the city began reconciling accounts in February of 2007 (only after 7 months of the fiscal year had passed).
Unfortunately for Barrie Tilghman and her merry little band things are getting a little too complicated for them to keep fibbing on the fly.
There was one good thing that came from Friday’s fib fest. The next time Debbie Campbell, or anyone else states that the Barrie Tilghman administration can’t balance its own checkbook, we have video of the City Administrator stating that the city can’t balance its own checkbook.
cross posted at Salisbury News
Technorati Tags: Maryland, Salisbury, politics, Salisbury politics, fiscal policy, audit, corruption
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On one hand, failure to reconcile the books on a monthly basis (A January 2007 edict) is because of inexperience & lack of knowledge within the department, on the other because of inadequate staff. Well, which is it? Seems it’s inadequate staff either way you look at it.
A fisrt 10 minutes accounting student could total 2 columns, one being money in, the other money out. Heck, you need not study accounting at all to be able to do this. Betcha second graders could do it.