Hypocrisy Reigns in Salisbury (Along With the Usual Lies)
In this morning’s Daily Times the public was fed more misinformation from the Tilghman administration as well as hypocrisy. Again, City Adminstrator John Pick is the Tilghman appointee charged with feeding falsehood to the taxpayers and voters of Salisbury.
City Administrator John Pick stressed the financial wing of the Internal Services Division, with three people
shouldering all accounting duties — including director Pamela Oland — continues to be severely understaffed.
How many times has Councilwoman Debbie Campbell (and since her recent election, Councilwoman Terry Cohen) asked the administration if they needed additional staff in order to discharge their duties properly, and on time? Each time, either Mayor Tilghman, Pick, or city finance chief Pam Oland has stated that they did not need additional staff. Now that they have been caught in the midst of a financial scandal, they don’t have enough staff.
This is not a question of whether the administration lied to its citizens, but simply one of when. They were either lying when they stated that they did not need additional staff, or they are lying now.
Pick’s (and the administration’s hypocrisy) comes to play when Pick now claims that:
He will recommend the council include in the June budget space for adding an extra accountant and a financial analyst.
Time and again, the question has been raised, but the administration has stated that they didn’t need any more staff. When the budget is presented, DO NOT be surprised that the Tilghman administration will propose to cut a fairly popular or important city service and claim that it’s necessary to pay for additional staff in the Department of Internal Services (Finance). Will the Mayor cut the bureaucracy that she has been feeding throughout her tenure? Highly doubtful.
Of course this does not explain the fact that the administration has lied at least twice about this same issue. As shown above, Pick blames the problem on staffing levels. On Friday, Pick told WBOC:
“They thought they were doing it correctly but they were not. They thought those adjustments were supposed to be made at the end of the year, but that’s not correct. That’s corrected now,” said Pick, who noted the adjustments are supposed to be made each month.
Which is it John? Not enough people? People who don’t know how to do their job? According to the city’s auditors both are false. We won’t argue that the city needs more competent people in the finance department (the auditor has recommended this for at least two years), but the auditor found the lost $10.2 million, not the finance department when they reconciled the accounts at the end of the year.
What you have not read (seen, or heard) in the media is that the Barrie Tilghman administration didn’t even know how much in property tax revenue they were owed. Think about that when you go to pay your property taxes. If the auditor didn’t reconcile the accounts for the city, they still would not know how much they were owed at the end of last June. They probably don’t have a clue what they were owed at the end of December, 2007.
Another item that you are not seeing in the mainstream media is the administration’s willingness to not only mislead the public, but their refusal to tell the truth to the City Council. Time and again, City Finance Director Pam Oland, along with at least one member of her staff, have stated that they are reconciling cash and investment accounts each month. According to the auditor this is probably true (at least since February or March of 2007). The problem lies with the competence of the staff and the fact that management DID NOT review the work of that staff. The auditor clearly states that reconciliations were not done properly and they were not reviewed by Oland or her chief assistant in Finance.
If you are a Salisbury tax payer and want to see the best (and cheapest) show in town, head on down to the GOB Monday around 4 PM. As we stated Friday, things are getting a little too complicated for Barrie and her crew to keep fibbing on the fly. Watching them explain this fiasco should be sadly entertaining.
cross posted at Salisbury News
Technorati Tags: Maryland, Salisbury, politics, Salisbury politics, fiscal policy, corruption, scandal, Barrie Tilghman, John Pick, Pam Oland, audit
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