WIB Fiscal Practices Series Begins

Timing is everything, they say. Yesterday, Juan Manigault - Republican candidate for Mayor of South Bend - called a press conference to decry the lack of disclosure of problems found in the most recent state audit for the city of South Bend. Yesterday, I was able to pick up (via a public records request) "correspondence and audits related to Workforce Development Services for years 1999-2003". At ten cents per page, my bill was for $16.90.

According to a South Bend Tribune article by Jeff Parrot http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070828/News01/708280326/-1/NEWS Mr.Manigault cited two problems found in a budget of approximately $150,000,000 involving fund shortfalls. Mayor Steve Luecke later responded that the shortfalls were anticipated and gave details about that. He pointed out "There were no funds lost or misused". The other concern that came up was a failure to deposit emergency medical services revenue in a timely manner.

It seems that the State and the City need to get on the same page accounting-wise to resolve the first issue. The city claims it has already addressed the second one.

Mr Manigault reportedly distributed a press release entitled "City Audit Results Not Revealed" and pledged to, if elected, " take the initiative to publicize problems that arise". Mr Parrott notes, "But Manigault admitted he did not notify the press in 2002 when the Indiana Department of Workforce Development raised questions about how the Workforce Investment Board, Inc., then headed by Manigault, had accounted for the expenditure of federal grant money."

Mr. Parrott's next paragraph states a position held by Mr. Manigault, but is the crux of what we'll be looking at in this series. It reads "The state workforce development agency ultimately cleared the WIB of any wrongdoing, but not before the WIB had to spend more than $228,000 to hire an accounting firm to reconstruct its books."

The 169 pages of documents I received were all written after the reconstruction noted above. The vast majority of them were generated prior to the finding cited above. It seems likely there is more to know about this.

If Mr. Manigault is sincere in his wish to be forthcoming in "publicizing problems that arise", I'll do my best to help him out when warranted.

I'm not going to try to distill all this information into some kind of summary (though perhaps, at the end), and I intend for the most part to not to render judgement. I will attempt to take a document or two at a time and tell the reader what it says. Til next time.

Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport

Don Wheeler
South Bend, IN