No Conspiracy to Steal Your Money.... Residents Are Just Paranoid!
Rodger Konow was the North Region Manager for the Chicago Park District - our Rogers Park area District. He was ultimately responsible for the management of our public parks and the monies afforded them through our taxes and park user fees.
These are the fees that are collected, usually in cash, from park programs and usage such as soccer leagues, basketball organizations, park programs and after school programs.
These fees are ostensibly returned to the city parks in order to further fund these programs and other initiatives such as the construction of the Gale Park Fieldhouse.
What some of us have witnessed since 1998 is that the Area Managers would arrive at our local parks, collect the fees, and drive away. Often no receipts were generated. Therefore there was no accountability as to where the cash went.
When questioning such practices we were told, basically, that everything was just fine, the fees were being properly dispersed, we were paranoid, there was no conspiracy to steal the money, and maybe we should just shut up and find something more useful to do.
The Pottawattomie Park Advisory Council requested a full financial audit of that park's finances from the Inspector General of the City of Chicago in that year. Nothing substantial ever came of it.
Mr. Konow was fired from the Chicago Park District this week in a scandal that involves $30,000 in cash found in another North Region CPD manager's home.
The cash was North Region Park user fees. So far, four high-ranking North Region Chicago Park District employees, including Konow, have been fired.
The case has been forwarded to the Cook County state's attorney's office for investigation and possible indictments.
Reported by "Broken Heart" Guest Correspondent Dane Ronvik
11 comments:
$30 thousand dollars here, $27, 000 thousand dollars lost there.
Maybe we should just shut up and find something more useful to do?
3 city park officials fired
Audit finds thousands in fee money at house
By Charles Sheehan
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 12, 2006
Three Chicago Park District managers, including a high-ranking official, were fired this week after an extensive audit involving thousands of dollars in fees that ended up in an employee's home.
The district turned its findings over to the state's attorney's office, which confirmed Wednesday that it was looking into the case to determine if criminal charges are warranted.
An internal audit was launched in July when "thousands and thousands of dollars" in Park District funds were found in the home of the finance manager who worked at the North Region office, 6601 N. Western Ave., according to a source.
The ensuing investigation implicated two officials who oversaw dozens of parks in the North Region, as well as their superior, who was promoted later in the summer to a central administrative position overseeing programming and finances for all parks.
Sources said the audit went far beyond the initial discovery of money found in the home. The missing funds came from fees collected at some of the 190 parks that make up the North Region, which encompasses 26 neighborhoods from Edison Park to Logan Square.
Park officials declined to say exactly how much money is missing or has been recovered.
The Park District is divided into four regions, which also include the South Region, Lakefront Region and Central Region. Parks collect money for everything from ice skate rentals and basketball courts to fitness centers and even auto repair classes.
From the Sun-Times:
In the 2006 budget, the park district created an audit department to better monitor financial rules.
SARBOX will not, mark my words, will not keep a crook from engaging in criminal behavior. It just costs a lot of $$, mostly accruing to accountants and attorneys and SBOX consultants, and takes away from productive endeavors (like making gizmos or whatever). It is causing companies to avoid going public and/or withdrawing from public markets thus limiting their financial resources to expand and our ability to invest in them and profit.
Who do you think, exactly, will pay for the cost of SARBOX (and it ain't cheap!)for government? Why that would be you and me and all other taxpayers with the funds accruing most to accountants, attorneys, and SBOX consultants (and money diverted from other things like, oh, police).
Given the incredible financial mismanagement on the part of almost every government, do you really think that governments will somehow manage the cost of their SBOX compliance better than they are managing other finances now?
While the Park District employee stole money the reality is that the Park District caught the bastard. What more do folks want? A crime was committed and government actually worked and 1) discovered the crime; 2) caught the perp. We need the attendant costs and diversion of funds from more important things to do what that wasn't already done here?
SBOX will not prevent a crime. Think of SBOX as a hate crime law. Hate crimes haven't exactly had a big impact on criminal activity.
Bottomline: you can't legislate morality or righteous behavior. All you can do is punish bad behavior. Looks like our park district thief will be punished.
It's hard to see how SBOX would translate into the public sector, given the differences between corporate structures and government administration. How high up would you need to go to find the "CEO" in the public context? It gets a little tricky...
One thing that seems evident to me is that SBOX is causing public companies to tighten up enforcement of the rules. Will that prevent all corporate crime? No, obviously not. Will it perhaps prevent certain types of crime or the prevalence of crime, due to increased oversight? Maybe. Hopefully.
Remember though, that corporations are not organized democratically, and have much more leeway to decide how to fix things when they go wrong - remedies that are not, for better or worse, available to the public sector.
However, if the take away from SBOX idea is that supervisors in the public sector should be held responsible (at least have their job security at stake) if those they supervise commit criminal acts while on the job..that is an interesting notion. I think that already does happen in certain sectors, but in an ad hoc sort of way. At any rate, the idea that the buck should stop with those at the top is deservedly popular with voters, but I would imagine is not a terribly popular activity with those elected to write the laws. After all, the private sector didn't write SBOX - it was imposed from without. Now, who has the muscle to make the public sector do that to themselves?
After the 1929 stock market crash all kinds of regs and laws were put in place to prevent malfeasance, yet it happened again. A certain percentage of a population will engage in criminal activity (estimated to be between 5-10%). The goal is to catch this 5-10% and punish them; it not ought to be to have heavy and expensive regs that the clever can manipulate but that penalize 90+% of the law-abiding population. The only thing I see coming out of SBOX is CEOs changing corporate culture though any lasting change to culture must come from the heart (and not regs) or it will be transitory.
Another Bernie Ebbers can rise up tomorrow to cheat his co. out of $. Enron, otoh, was able to happen due to the complicity of the accounting industry and even the regulators and overseers (though once it blew up everyone scrambled). SBOX won't prevent another Enron (yes, I oversimplify but indulge me), particularly in an anything-goes environment that permeated our society at all levels in the late '90s and early 00s.
If any one of the people who report to me want to cheat on their T&Es, for instance, they could and it would be damn difficult to detect if they were smart about it. Should I be punished for this criminal activity? At what point should I be able to detected (let's say they manufacture biz meeting meals every week and tell me they are on meetings but actually take the meetings in an office and not during lunch)? How is the reasonable detection level determined? If they have receipts, if I ask them about meetings with x people, if business results from their so-called T&E activity, short of tailing them, how could I possibly know?
On public finances -- they ought to be transparent and open to public view, be audited by professionals with professional systems in place, and one certainly shouldn't need to file a FOI just to see a public entity's books (since we, the taxpayers, are footing the bill). Those manning the books (elected officials and/or management bureaucrats) should have to answer questions within a reasonable time frame, and there should be a process for contesting spending, accounting for revenues, and/or financial management. In theory it should be very difficult to steal from public coffers with so many eyes on the till. However, our system has become so overly bureaucratic that most people would probably rather have a root canal without anesthetic than try to examine public books. Sadly, more regs won't overcome the fundamental problem here which should be easy access and almost ever-present public scrutiny.
Pamela, I agree with many of your points here. Forgive this naive question, but aren't all city agencies subjected to regular third party audits - it would astonish me if the answer were no, but anything is possible...
The idea of regular random third party audits, public presentations of audit reports with a mandatory public question period seems to me to be a very reasonable suggestion, so perhaps if we are going to lobby for something it shouldn't be a SBOX type thing (which, as you point out, seems almost impossible to enforce fairly) but rather more transparency before the public.
Yes, local, state, and federal governments are subjected to internal and external audits. That doesn't mean that those controlling the budgets/funds can't manipulate where and how things are classified (besides which trying to interpret accounting rules is almost impossible if you don't have a CPA and keep up with FASB rules, regs, and directives). All the competing special interests, over the years, have fought to protect their view which has led to a real morass, imo. On the federal level, the GAO does a pretty good job from what little I have read but if our elected officials don't delve into the mountainous detail and go after problems how can the average person be expected to parse it? I don't mean to sound cynical but some fundamental things need to change before we get to anything that looks even a little bit like transparency. Just look at the itty bitty DevCorp and Morse SSA budget and books nonsense that seems impossible to follow, forget about a real review.
In my humble view we need to start by electing politicians who will 1) just say no to all special interests no matter how noble (sometimes you do have to toss the baby with the bath water, at least for a bit); 2) demand simplification and transparency by rolling back rules and regs that protect special interests (even if noble). I know this sounds radical but short of a tear down and rebuilding of how government entities do business and conduct themselves, I don't see how any improvements in transparency and financial management will ever come about. It seems that so-called improvements just make things more complicated. Just look at the tax code -- put aside whether you agree or don't agree with certain cuts -- if you are an adult with even smallish assets (house, retirement savings, etc.), doing one's taxes is difficult even with tax prep software (everyone who really understands depreciation and how to account for it properly, please stand up), and if you are self-employed and have to file schedule C, well . . . I think I've made my point. What's an average person to do? Hire an accountant! So a gun for hire who doesn't care as much about your money as you do (no matter how professional or competent)handles your "numbers" in ways that you may or may not understand. We rarely even really understand our own "books." The accounting industry likes our tax code and is pretty opposed to propositions to simplify it. This is what I mean about special interests. I have nothing against accountants but we shouldn't be making or not making policy based on how they may profit or lose from the changes.
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