Friday, July 20, 2012
Augusta, GA
By Al Gray
George
Eskola should be proud. In the run-up to the Augusta Commission meeting this
Tuesday, there was a last-minute interjection of an accounting analysis by a
party in the midst of the Tee Center Parking Decks controversy. George knew
about it early. His wise years of experience said take the new gambit with a
grain or two of salt.
“But
this comparison is coming from Paul Simon of Augusta Riverfront LLC the company
that owns the Marriott not the city's attorney who worked on the deal. ”
Precisely.
+100
for George.
Then
there was this report by Jake Wallace of
Augusta Fox affiliate WFXG.
Wallace
seemed impressed by Mayor Deke Copenhaver's cheap trick of having the city's
external auditor from the firm of Maulden Jenkins put on the agenda to give a
positive report on the annual city FINANCIAL AUDIT soon after Augusta
Today activist and City Stink contributor Lori Davis' presentation in favor of
a forensic audit of the Tee Center Parking Decks agreements and against
approval the proposed parking deck management agreement that would have been
the subject of the forensic audit. Wallace wrote -
“Mayor Deke Copenhaver agrees, saying the finance
team received high praise at tonight's meeting by an auditor for the 2011
audit, is the same team who worked the finances of the TEE Center deal.
"They applauded our finance folks for doing
such a great job with fiscal management," Copenhaver says. "That's
the same team that put this deal together. Why would they do something
different on the parking deck and the TEE Center than they did with the city
finances?"
Wallace
totally blew it.
A city
financial audit only attests that generally accepted accounting principles have
been met with respect to the city's transactions. It does not extend to the
point of questioning HOW the transactions come about or whether a contract is
totally stacked against the city's interests. That is the role of a forensic
audit. After a flawed deck deal is executed, a financial audit will find
everything to be just wonderful versus the standard of the flawed contract. A
forensic audit would derive the answers of whether there are material controls
deficiencies in contract administration and would seek to identify fraud in the
execution and application of the management agreement.
Deke
trotted out a financial auditor and Fox obliged his clever subterfuge by
equating the annual city auditor's report about finances with one about a much
more in-depth audit of only a couple of complex transactions.
For
another thing, the city's finance team has had practically nothing to do with
the deck agreements, as Augusta is using outside legal counsel, bond
counsel,and even has gone to the extent of excluding the Convention and
Visitor's Bureau chief, Barry White, a figure who was integral to the early Tee
Center presentations to the city commission and the city executive most attuned
to the contract needs to be negotiated.
Wallace
did not know that, or at least, did not report it.
Fox 54
came up short and looked amateurish in rising to the bait.
We are
sure that they will get better, given a few more years around Augusta politics.
It truly is a world all to its own.
This
writer remembers George when he was an amateur, too.***
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