The county will facilitate the auditors with whatever information they require to do this work, to include office space, parking, network connections, information and files. The Clerk's office, I assume, will do likewise.
For my part, as a brand new member (as of last Thursday) of the Escambia Tourist Develoment Council------ I welcome the audit and any findings which will be helpful in our local administration of these important funds for the purposes allowed and according to statutory limitatations and stipulations/conditions.
The estimated time for completion of the field work will be 4-5 months--with an initial, preliminary report to come sometime in late spring or early summer. See the engagement letter, below.
2 comments:
Interesting. While I understand that this is to some degree legal boilerplate, nonetheless there is no stipulation of what exact areas the auditors will be focusing on. Yes, the TDT is what they were initially contacted about. But the general audit of Gulf Breeze started with a smallish corner and grew legs. Hopefully somebody will steer them straight towards the "procurement" that was happening post Sally.
This is one reason it's so amusing to watch certain corners conduct their charade that David Bear's interest in reform is limited to an "obsession" with Doug Underhill. Doug's bad actions are merely a portion of the long list of shady actions he has exposed. I think the earliest was when he determined the monies for the Arts Council of Northwest Florida weren't being handled properly, so he turned it in to the Clerk's Office and the County, who then turned it over to the SAO to clean up. The result was ACE and the unified budget (although of course Doug likes to pretend that he cleaned up TDC money, while he was really committing ethics violations connected with being a member of that Board). He then spent years on end holding ECUA accountable, which finally resulted in the grand jury report detailing just how badly that agency needs to be reformed (if only our delegation actually had the gumption to do it, instead of joining forces with one of the lifers on the Board to protect ECUA's interests and put forward a D2 candidate who is vowing to funnel as much grant money to EUCA as possible). Next up was him jumping in to help those of us who were fighting to drag Doug's nasty work into the light, and now he has brought an audit of, at the very least the TDT funds at the Clerk's office during his first year as Chair. Maybe they'll also look into how Pam Childers's office was paying Matt Posner out of the wrong cost center nearly the entire time he was interim, through no fault of Matt or the County. Just straight-up sloppiness on the Clerk's part that she ought to be personally liable for.
Thank goodness there is somebody with means, wherewithal, and political clout to recognize that Pensacola and Escambia will never achieve full potential as long as elected officials and government sponsored agencies keep playing fast and loose with public money. Hats off once again, David. And thank you from the people who recognize how important the clean-up you're conducting really is.
Smoke screen to try and redirect from the real corruption.
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