Amidst what we'll write off as a one-day lull in Emerald City election news, we'll go back to our news article queue and spotlight Tuesday's Scott Schwebke story, which puts the Standard-Examiner print edition readership focus on the State Auditor's August 18, 2011 report, a topic which has been rattling around Weber County Forum since at least late August. Heres the pertinent SE Story btw, for what it's worth :
Although this story was lightly covered by the SE once before, Tuesday's version is something that we can only characterize as a Schwebke-enabled Godfrey Administration attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the SE's hard-copy readership. To illustrate the weakness of the Godfrey administration's present attempt to shift the blame away from itself, we'll focus on these three telling story paragraphs:
Being the curious type, we cast about on the web for a standard finance definition of the term "significant deficiency," and Lo & Behold, here it is:The administration's failure to get permission from the city council for the expenditures is labeled a significant deficiency and does not comply with state law or municipal ordinances, the report states.
However, the report's use of the term "significant deficiency" is incorrect because it is reserved for financial issues instead of administrative or procedural matters, said Mark Johnson, the city's chief administrative officer.
"They used the wrong terms," he said.
SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY, in finance, is an internal control shortcoming in a highly important control area or an aggregation of such deficiencies that could result in a misstatement of the financial statements that is more than inconsequential.What we've witnessed here folks, was a series of instances where Ogden City's "internal ("procedural") control shortcomings" failed to identify the administration's serial unauthorized misappropriations of funds over fairly extensive time periods. Yes. The State Auditor used the "right terms" and not the "wrong terms," contrary to Me Johnson's idiotic ramblings. It's procedural defects which the definition contemplates, and it's therefore with a heavy heart that we say that we have no alternative but to label Mr. Johnson's lame excuse that these reported "gaffes" were "merely procedural" as grossly and wholly inaccurate, mendacious and assbackwards.
Adding further insult to injury, the fundamentally dishonest Mr. Johnson also offers as an additional lame defense, e.g., a political variant to the idiomatic "no harm, no foul rule". The essence of this flimsy additional blanket excuse for the administration's bad conduct, we suppose, is that since the Council and one private citizen already covered the administration's derriere after the fact, we should just ignore the bad conduct and cut Boss Godfrey & Associates a free pass.
So what about it, O Gentle Ones? As we approach that wonderful day in January 2012 when the Ogden City Municipal Building screen door will slap a departing Boss Godfrey on the a$$, is there anybody here on WCF who'll be willing to cut the little guy a free pass?
(Didn't think so, but felt compelled to ask.)
