So, you’re an auditing firm that failed to find anything wrong at an institution that hired you specifically to see if anything was wrong. Later, after you give it a clean report, it becomes apparent that plenty is wrong. So what do you do? Simple. You figure out what went wrong and announce the results to the public, since the taxpayers are are the ones who paid you. Public audits are all about transparency and accountability. Right?
Wrong. If you are Clifton Gunderson, you hide behind the argument that the report you completed is a private document and cannot be revealed to the public. Seriously:
District 150 attorney David Walvoord said a financial review of the middle school, including its activity fund, by Clifton Gunderson LLC, the district’s auditors, received a “clean bill of health” last year, when Davis, now an academic officer in the school district’s central administration office, was a principal there.
Walvoord said District 150 has a practice of reviewing its schools every two to three years and always when a principal leaves a building.
A request of the review under the Freedom of Information Act was approved by District 150 officials, but Clifton Gunderson officials on Tuesday were disputing its release, claiming the review documents were their property and not subject to the act.
Laura Petelle, who takes her seat as a member of the school board, is something of an expert on the Freedom of Information Act and she might has an opinion on Clifton Gunderson opinion and on the district administrator’s wisdom in letting Clifton Gunderson decide what documents are public and which are not.
Seriously. It’s not like the documents reveal the formula for Classic Coke, or anything.
Good God what a mess.
Tags: auditors, Clifton Gunderson, Julie McArdle, Ken Hinton, Mary Davis, Peoria School District 150
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
The hits keep coming!!!!!
Could 150 be any more screwed up??!!
I’m going to be very curious as to how the other board members react to Laura.
GET ‘EM LAURA!!!!!
This snowball just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I am in the process of gathering information concerning the lockdowns at both RHS and PHS in late January. It has been difficult getting the information from PPD, though. I am going to ask PSd150 for a copy of their reports of same incident. I am also going to ask for a copy of salaries paid to each super and academic officer. I wonder if they will release that information?
Also, I didn’t think the school board could act/vote on an issue in a closed session. The meeting wasn’t announced and the website has been down for days leaving no way to let people know about the meeting. Is this a violation of the Open Meetings Act?
I am pretty sure the workpapers, their internal stuff, is their work product and not subject to release. However, you should be able to get a copy of the actual review that they issued to the board, a document akin to the audit report. What the school district “paid for” should be spelled out in the engagement letter, also something you should be able to see. It would state the scope of the services offered. With a public accounting firm you are paying for an opinion (in an audit, which is different than a review) not all the work that the public accounting bean counters do to arrive at that opinion.
Full disclosure, it has been many, many moons since I was a public accounting bean counter. I do think they need to switch auditors. Clifton Gunderson has had the engagement too long and my eyebrows were raised when I became aware that the district had the same poor audit notes year after year. That stuff should be corrected before the next audit, and your auditors should make that very clear. The article in the PJ Star a few months ago that talked about that, seemed to state that the district just paid Clifton additional money to correct their errors. That is not a practice I agree with. An entity as large as 150 should have at least one on staff accountant competent enough to get these things done properly. It isn’t rocket science.
In the defense of Clifton Gunderson, the firm can only audit what has been given to them. It is entirely conceivable that members of Admin gave them info that they knew would produce an acceptable audit. This fully fits with the “Garbage in- Garbage out” result that is so prevalent in District business…
“Also, I didn’t think the school board could act/vote on an issue in a closed session.”
Personnel issues MUST be handled in closed session. It’s a delicate issue, because one of the “dangers” of sunshine laws, and one reason many states were reluctant to pass them, is that public employees — who are not elected and who have certain workplace protection guarantees, like private employees — would have their personnel records shown to the entire world and it would become difficult to hire good people and impossible to manage legally private personnel issues — potentially including things like reasons employees took medical leave, which is strongly protected by other laws.
Does this create opportunities for abuse? Definitely, and it’s possible we’re seeing one of those situations here, where “personnel reason” is used as an excuse to keep a legally public issue out of the public eye. However, I would be shocked if the closed session didn’t involved discussion of private personnel files — the question is merely whether they did so properly, or whether they improperly mixed in other issues that should have been debated publicly.
This does create other problems — this is a very public firing of a public employee and we don’t get to know the reasons, which is problematic. But I’m fairly sure the lawsuit will bring out a lot of that information and we’ll all have a (very expensive) chance to judge for ourselves.
I agree garbage in = garbage out, however auditors get paid to recognize garbage. That is their job. Since this is just a Review and not an Audit, I will agree that is it more likely that admin could finesse things to get the desired result, but I am skeptical.
Personel matters must be discussed in closed session, unelss the subject of the discussions waives that right.
However, the action (vote, recommendation etc) must be taken in open session.
.
One more thing
all exectuive seeions must be audio tapes and they must be kept for 18 months (i think) so if there is a suspected abuse, a judge can listen to the tape and determine what the hell exactly happened.
so we may be hearing about that next
.
momof4boys- you mentioned in your post that you are FOIA’ing the salary information. This is already available online- google Chicago Sun Times Teacher Salary Search. They have a feature on their website where you can search for any teacher or adminitrators salary in the state of Illinois.
If the auditors knew there was a student activity fund, they SHOULD have noticed that someone was using to pay off a credit card bill, including for about $4,000 listed as miscellaneous.
Or did they just simply not bother to try to look at how this fund was being. Isn’t that what they were told to do, namely to make sure that the books were in order?
I mean, even if they were given the books on the student activity fund, was there NOT some record of the activity fund’s existence? Why didn’t they say “waitaminute, where are the books on the student activity fund?”
This just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Thanks John Green! I’m still going to FOIA the consultant fees they pay Dr. Fischer and others, along with current administrators.
Mom of 4 boys – a few thoughts…
Don’t forget to ask for all purchase orders and invoices regarding vendor payments for professional, education or related services. The reason you must do this is because often the district pays for consultant services provided by former or retired employees as consultants/vendors.
In other words, some are paid through accounts payable, rather than payroll. We suspect that this reduces the on-line stats for admin- student ratios.
For tax purposes, they would recieve a form 1099. Maybe you can FOIA a list of 1099’s issued.
Auditing is all about sampling and assessing internal controls. Making sure the books are in order is not the same as reviewing every accounting transaction that happens as SD150. $4000 seems like a lot, but in a budget as large as SD150 it isn’t material. Also remember this is a Review not an Audit, different levels of assurance. You get what you pay for, and a Review is cheaper. Smaller things like this should be caught by an entity’s own internal auditor/accounting department. Didn’t they just hire an internal auditor? He needs to get on this stuff and start cracking heads.
But BeanCounter, you’re being reasonable and not looking for malice and/or ignorance on the part of District 150. That kind of talk has no place around here.
Mcsey- how silly of us. Why on Earth would we think anything was afoot? Things have been going so swimmingly.
Here’s a transparency checklist for school district web sites:
http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/School_district_websites
In defense of Clifton Gunderson, Dist 150 is always given copies of everything… it seems they just don’t want to hand it over.
Ditto to BeanCounter’s points on CPA’s audit/reviews.
(I am a non-practicing CPA, now in another field of practice.)
District 150 seems to want public to think that an external audit(or review) guarantees 100% that there was No Fraud/Theft/Embezzlement/etc.
(Notice the comment by Dist 150 mouthpiece David Wolvoord about Lindbergh’s “clean bill of health”.)
Well, there is no such guarantee!
So, please do not take the above as one.
Why? Why? Why? What else are they hiding? The public is entiled to see all these school records. Employees who have been fired illegally must be livid!
It seems there is more at stake here than giving away the recipe of Classic Coke!
It’s been released, along with a statement from the district on the McArdle matter. Click here for details.