Wild (and misplaced) rhetoric
The Lexington Herald Leader editorial board is mighty upset about the Kentucky Association of Counties misspending perhaps several thousand dollars.
The funny part, really, is that they are worried about insufficient spending documentation of an organization whose money only indirectly comes from taxpayers when they can't be bothered to look at the much larger pool of abused taxpayer funds going through our public school system.
The last time Auditor Crit Luallen perused any Kentucky Department of Education spending at all, though, she found millions being tossed around on the disgraceful CATS testing system. Fortunately for us, the CATS program was phased out by the 2009 General Assembly.
But no one knows how much the non-functioning accounting system used by our education bureaucracy is costing us unnecessarily. Those who have succeeded in pushing for Washington D.C. to audit the Federal Reserve should help us force a real top to bottom audit of the Kentucky Department of Education.
posted by Kentucky Progress @ 6/30/2009 05:20:00 PM
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4 Comments:
You are making the contention that there is a large pool of abused taxpayer funds going through the schools systems.
What I think I know about you is that you object to larger teacher salaries, better job protection, health insurance through a more fair bargaining process.
Are you calling out teachers? Are you calling out specific administrators with conflicted interests? Are you saying that all administrators have conflicting interests inherently? If so, why doesn't that apply to corporate with the largest wells to corrupt?
Why don't you champion more rights for shareholders, like votes on CEO and executive pay - even contracts with labor unions?
Are you are a corporate thug? Is that why?
No, John, I'm simply pointing out the fact that no one is minding the store. We don't know how much money is being wasted on our schools because we don't have a mechanism to keep track. If KDE has nothing to hide and I'm just wrong, they should have no problem posting every expenditure on the internet for everyone to see.
I'll wait...
RE: John Blickenstaff's comments
The problems with the Kentucky Department of Education's (KDE) MUNIS financial accounting system are well know to the Legislative Research Commission (LRC). For example, "LRC Research Report 338" lists many important issues such as KDE's failure to update the chart of accounts and then get that updated information into the hands of school and district personnel. As a consequence, school and district personnel have been coding expenses improperly. That makes it impossible to do accurate analysis.
MUNIS' deficiencies may have played a factor in illegal activities. Former Johnson County District treasurer Peggy VanHoose and her accomplice stole more than a million dollars before being caught and convicted. During the trials it was learned that an accomplice was able to alter the MUNIS system to hide the theft.
There have been other convictions recently of school personnel who carried out thefts over multiple years before getting caught. Could a weak accounting system have been a factor in the delay in their apprehension?
One major problem with an inaccurate school accounting program is that it delays meaningful "bang for the buck" types of analysis of various school programs. Examining efficiency and effectiveness was the original purpose of research behind LRC Research Report 338. Sadly, the LRC was forced to report to the legislature that the choas in MUNIS makes it impossible to conduct meaningful studies at this time. That means taxpayers get hurt and so do children.
So, while we have seen some shocking behavior in business and industry, the schools seem to be a reflection of that larger societal problem and need good fiscal controls just as badly.
So far, those fiscal controls are not functioning properly in our public school system. That hurts all of us.
Worse still, there isn't a sense of urgency in KDE to fix the problem. LRC Research Report was issued 2-1/2 years ago. MUNIS still isn't fixed.
In fact, maybe teachers could get higher salaries if we could cut out waste in the system with effective fiscal information needed to identify that waste.
I would like to say congratulation..
hope for you is that it is ultimately a rewarding experience.
___________________
Jessica
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