No doubt the average taxpayer in the county will be surprised to learn that the Charleston County School District has never had a comprehensive audit. The state requires audits of the procurment departments only. That may have worked in the days when procurment was where the money was, but today's multi-million dollar capital programs and general operations deserve to see the light of day.
For two years members of the Board of Trustees have pushed for a performance audit strongly opposed by the administration and the Board Chairman, Chris Fraser. The struggle continues this summer as four trustees attempt to get the item on the meeting agenda. Fraser has reneged more than once on his promise to put it on the "next" agenda.
Also, no system exists to review responses to even the minor audit taking place now. For example, the auditors selected and tested 40 credit card purchases to determine if they were being managed in compliance with the District's own stated policy; nearly half were not in compliance. Over 23,000 transactions were made. Has the District corrected this sinkhole or not? Who knows?
Fraser and Superintendent McGinley will continue to delay, linger, and wait because they know they have a five-member majority to push through any idiocy they wish and defeat any attempt at more transparency. After, it's OPM.
Ask your school board candidates where they stand on this issue.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
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3 comments:
Babbie, when you talk about numbers involving CCSD, it's easy to get confused when the numbers are so high to begin with.
Correction: Out of more than 230,000 transactions (not 23,000) the auditors reviewed 40 transactions as samples. Of those, 18 transactions were found to be seriously flawed. That's just under 50% of the sample they reviewed. The numbers are so overwhelming, it's little wonder ordinary board members don't want to look at it closely. Some CCSD trustees seem to prefer just putting their head in the sand.
Sounds a lot like Enron's Board of Directors just before the roof fell in on them.
CCSD has never had a performance audit. Recent procurement audits, which are very limited in scope, have indicated the county school board needs to address some potentially serious accounting problems that were identified last year. Now is the time to address those issues and a performance audit is long overdue. What better way to tighten up as resources have become limited? To ask the public to support a tax increase, as the school district’s leadership has done recently, and not order a performance audit would be irresponsible. It also invites questions about overall management shortcomings. - Henry Copeland
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