Welcome to the fiefdom, Konnie (WIB 7)

Konnie Beasley tells a story about a meeting with Juan Manigault where they were ironing out the details of the position she was about to accept (Vice President for Finance of the WIB). In a downtown restaurant - when the details were all agreed to by each of them - he grabbed her hand and said "Let's pray". She hadn't expected that.

Ms. Beasley had been warned away from accepting the position (a former Executive Vice President I spoke with had gotten the same advice), but she felt well equipped to take on what was clearly a clean-up operation. She was most recently from the position of Controller of Aramark, where she had straightened out serious accounting problems. I'm told she was highly appreciated and well treated there. Before that, she worked for WNDU for ten years, where she had worked up to Controller for that organization.

Here's what she told me learned pretty shortly after going to work for the agency:

The banks accounts had not been reconciled internally for as far back as she could discern. Because of the severe cash flow problems, the agency was unable to pay some vendors and checks for others bounced. The situation appearing hopeless, she felt that she needed to pick a date to start from and attempt a reconstruction. She chose July of 1999 because the records were accessible and her time was limited.

Alert for accounting disparities, she was nonetheless astounded at the number of them she found. These fell into two categories: Accounting errors - misappropriations and some simple errors- and cash shortages. The latter is of particular interest.

Ms. Beasley writes, "It is my belief that the cash shortage was pre -existant to my tenure, but not as obvious because of a child care grant and its funding that followed WDS" (I mistakenly referred to it as DWD in WIB 6) "which split from the agency in July 2000."

As is typical in large grants like this, it was common to have had money appropriated and the recipients not yet having cashed their checks. Ms. Beasley notes "What this had done for the organization, was to provide a cash float in the bank. When this fund followed WDS - NIWIB was left without this float it was accustomed to having, leading to shortages and overdrafts."

She told me one of her primary responsibilities was to prepare monthly reports ( referred to as AERs) which would provide complete information of accounting by grant. In other words, expenditures and balances remaining within each individual grant. Although this was supposed to be her job, she confided that frequently Mr. Manigault would insert his own figures - figures Ms. Beasley asserts that did not reflect the actual operation.

Ms. Beasley made a valiant attempt to deal with boxes and boxes of records and put in many dozens of hours in each week in this attempt. But it became clear she would need some help.

The story continues....

Don Wheeler