(WIB 10 ) The fiscal agent gets a fiscal agent, or, over 1.1 million not served

It's clear from the Crowe Chizek audit that "the agency" headed by Juan Manigault, was seriously dysfunctional. But - believe it or not - the news actually gets worse. Back to the Alan Degner letter of 10/06/2004:

"In early 2003 after the audits, our agency received the final grant close-outs for these (prior) three program years. After carefully reviewing the financial records, Mr. Chuck Martindale, the agency's former Controller, sent a letter to Mr. Juan Manigualt that outlined several discrepancies, including over-expenditures that exceeded $1.1 million."

This would be the $1.1 million problem that Mr. Manigault claims never happened.

"This over expenditure was created when two formula awards(WIA903 and WIA003) were reported by the Auditor (Crowe Chizek) as being a combined $4,245.030.00 as compared to the closeout submitted by NIWIB of $3,136.948.00."

Those notes about problems with sticking with cost allocation plans are tugging at our sleeves about now. And just for consistency:

"In addition, only 4 out of 23 grants could be reconciled with the Auditor report's 'Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards" to NIWIB closeouts submitted."

Keep in mind, the standard here is 100%. "The agency's" performance of approximately 17% lags a bit from the standard. Konnie Beasley was nearly apoplectic when she saw this note.

Remembering this letter is addressed to Mayor Luecke, and remembering his constraints...

"Based on these findings, the Department recommended the selection of a new fiscal agent to be effective on or before July 1, 2003. As chief elected official, you later selected Crowe Chizek to act as fiscal agent effective July 1, 2003."

If I'm following this, an entity whose sole purpose is to keep track of finances was ordered to have an outside organization retained to ensure they actually did that. That would pretty nearly seem to obviate the usefulness of "the agency". Back to the 1.1 mil.

"Because NIWIB had accumulated $1,108,082.00 in over-expenditures in these two grants, you and the other local elected officials had two options. You could either repay this amount to the State of Indiana through your local government funds or NIWIB could request to apply the over-expenditures to future WIA formulations."

Not much of choice here. But it meant that people who deserved help didn't get it because funds that should have been there for them had been previously spent on things having nothing to do with the programs the money was dedicated to. So job seekers and taxpayers took the hit.

Mr Degner continued that there was an additional $26,389.01 which local governments had to write a check for, because those grants had been closed out. Yet another unbudgeted taxpayer expense.

Mr. Degner wrote a stern letter. Having read it a few times now (it's available in its entirety in chapter 4) I find myself wondering why the state didn't (at a minimum) suggest a staff review. There is little in my experience that exceeds the volume of documentation demonstrating the failure of leadership of an organization, as I have seen in this case.

I have a few more thoughts to share. Until next time.

Don Wheeler