Treasurer told to "Stop the Bleeding"

I have a couple updates on the situation with the resigning County Treasurer, including new public details in the news and a look back at a failed vote on a temporary hire for the office being brought up from an October County Board meeting (jump directly to hiring vote here). Previous Cheat Sheet updates on the Treasurer resignation and office here.

First, in a damning summary of progress notes from December 2019 from the forensic accountants brought in to assist the County Treasurer's office, there are repeated concerns about lack of knowledgeable people, failure to do or even understand necessary functions, and a $20,000 price tag that still leaves a lot of work to do. The County Executive's memo along with it in this week's Committee of the Whole agenda packet (packet pages 41-42, pages 46-47 of the pdf file) is equally blunt:

In September, the Executive and Auditor began working with the Treasurer to resolve over $3 million in accounting issues that included lack of account postings for cash receipts and electronic transactions, credit card payments, grants, and tax collections that were clearly missing due to the significant variances from the previous year’s amounts. With this help, by December 4 most items were posted through the month of October, however property tax collector accounts have not been reconciled since April.

It was learned that no one in the Treasurer’s Office knew how to do the bank reconciliations. On December 1, the County Executive hired a forensic CPA from Clifton Larson Allen LLP to assist the Treasurer with bank reconciliations for Jan – Oct 2019 with the understanding that the Treasurer’s Office would learn the process and complete the year. The consultant spent about 140 hours at a cost of $20,000 locating information and creating reconciliation templates. However, because of missing information, she was able to complete only two of the necessary 100 reconciliations (ten months for ten accounts). Currently, there is no one knowledgeable in the Treasurer’s Office to finish 2019 reconciliations and start with January 2020...

In our opinion, it is essential that the following tasks be completed as soon as possible for the county to successfully move forward in 2020:

• Fill positions in the Treasurer’s Office with qualified staff.
• Develop an acceptable format and schedule for regular reporting to the County Board.
• Develop a work plan/schedule, including staff training and statutorily required 6-month board reviews of the books, to meet all requirements of the Treasurer’s Office for 2020 in an accurate and timely manner.

The News-Gazette coverage yesterday seized on the "no one knowledgeable in the Treasurer's Office" phrasing for it's headline. They highlighted various parts of the memo and the progress report here. The article also laid out a likely timeline for the resigning Treasurer's replacement:

[County Board Chairman Giraldo] Rosales will formally announce the upcoming treasurer vacancy at a county board committee meeting Tuesday, which will start the process for replacing Prussing at least temporarily. The remainder of Prussing’s four-year term will be up for election Nov. 3.

It will be at least later in February and possibly in March until a replacement can be appointed and confirmed, Rosales said.

Prussing’s replacement must be a Democrat, but it must also be someone who is qualified, he said.

“We’re in a pickle where the office is hemorrhaging, and we need somebody who is seriously going to do the work and crank out the numbers, not a political hire,” he said.

That full article here. It's worth pointing out that both the Executive and Board Chairman are also Democrats, as is the resigning Treasurer. Yesterday's headline comes from the Executive's own description of the report. It sounded harsh to me, but it appears to be an accurate description of the progress notes report:

The weekly updates in December just appear to look more dire as the forensic accountants determine the scope of the problem and the complete lack of anyone knowledgeable in the office to address it.  The full memo and these notes are available in the full agenda packet for the County Board COW meeting this week here (on pages 41-42 of the packet, pages 46-47 of the pdf file).


Treasurer's Temporary Hire Resolution Vote:

An issue that has been popping up among Democrats lately is whether some Democrats didn't give Prussing a fair shot at fixing the problem (perhaps even sabotaging it), by siding with Republicans in a vote appropriating money for a temporary hire back in October. The need for the temporary hiring resolution for the Treasurer's office was explained by the Treasurer as:

My Chief Deputy is on leave and this budget request is to pay for a temporary person for seven weeks. I have a highly qualified person hired to fill in at the same pay rate.

The resolution text and roll call of the vote is below:

Democrats voting with the Republicans are Young, Dillard-Meyers, and Rosales (there appears to be a double listing for Cowart, perhaps in error). The split between Democratic "yeas" and "nays" falls along a political rift highlighted in a recent Party Politics post here. I described the vote towards the end of a previous Cheat Sheet post here:

A personnel matter was raised in the Treasurer's office due to the chief deputy treasurer being on leave. Republicans and a handful of Democrats on the board voted against funding for a temporary staffer to help in that absence. Member Patterson took a moment towards the end of the meeting to complain that no Democrats had raised the issue in their caucus prior to the meeting and nobody justified their no vote during the opportunity for discussion prior to voting. He had a list of adjectives ranging from "disappointed" to "cowardice" for the move.

Video of the vote is available here and Member Patterson's comments describing it as "sabotage" at the time are available here on the Champaign County Clerk's YouTube channel. Given the severity of the problems and the communication issues it's difficult for me to say whether this vote would have helped or thrown more tax money into the shredder. I recommend talking to board members on their rationale for voting to see which argument holds up to you.