Another taxpayer funded circus parade marched through County Center Wednesday afternoon. Embattled County Administrator Pat Bean has been under fire for raises to herself and others (which she later had to be forced to give back). Those raises in question are under still under investigation by the FDLE at the request of Commissioner Kevin Beckner and most recently Bean was accused of snooping in emails that could have been a part of that investigation. The County seems to barely function as Bean and County Attorney Renee Lee along with County Auditor Jim Barnes work to make backstabbing an Olympic sport. This thing is getting complicated but you can get the cliff notes on this most recent scandal here. Chairman Ken Hagan threw out some tough words when this latest scandal broke as he asked the toxic threesome to resign or said he would make a motion to fire them at Wednesday's showdown. Was that leadership the Chairman was displaying or just emergency triage? Either way it seemed much needed but Wednesday's cage match turned out to have about as much action as curling. We did get a few answers but were left with many more questions and of course a large tab to taxpayers.
Before the afternoon circus showdown though an agenda item in the morning is worth mentioning. The Clerk's office updated Commissioners on the cost of three upcoming audits (which were outsourced to them because of the auditor's (IPA) shortcomings in the first place). When Commissioner Higginbotham balked at the $224,000 proposed price tag, Dan Pohto of the Clerk's office then offered this up:
>>DAN POHTO: OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS, FY 06, FY 07, AND
FY 08 AND FY 09 YOU HAVE SPENT OVER $1.725 MILLION ON YOUR
PERFORMANCE AUDIT FUNCTION.
YOU DO NOT HAVE ONE SINGLE YELLOW BOOK PERFORMANCE AUDIT
DELIVERED TO YOU.
I'M HERE THAT — YOU SIGNED A MEMO OF UNDERSTANDING AND
TOLD ME TO GO FORTH, AND I'M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT YOU
WILL HAVE THREE YELLOW BOOK PERFORMANCE AUDITS IN SIX TO
SEVEN MONTHS AT LESS THAN 14% OF THE TOTAL MONEY THAT YOU
SPENT IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS ON PERFORMANCE AUDITS.
IT'S YOUR DECISION TO MAKE IF YOU WANT ALL THESE, YOU
DON'T WANT ANY OF THEM.
So you see, in all the years that Barnes (the auditor) has been there he has never done a Yellow Book audit and that evidently is the standard to which government audits are held. To have the Clerk's office doing it now is not only taking their time it is also taking more taxpayer dollars. Funny that this presentation should come in on the very day the trio's fate would be discussed. Since Pat Bean sets the agenda, I have to give it to her on this one. To anybody that has been paying attention, the IPA looked incompetent and nobody ever mentioned his name. Bean -1 Barnes -0.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2010.