| April 1, 2005
Bob
Graham, Executive Director of the Wyoming County Council on Aging, made
headlines last year when his lucrative compensation package was
revealed. The snorts of
moral indignation could be heard everywhere and echoes are still
bouncing off the hills. And
the question still being asked is how could Bob Graham earn nearly
$500,000 in a poor little place like
Wyoming
County
?
The
answer to that question is simple—he had an employment contract.
It was spelled out—in English.
What
is amazing, to me at least, is that Bob Graham could manage all of the
programs under his control with such economy that he could pay himself
in Enron dollars instead of
West Virginia
dollars. From what I have
read, Mr. Graham earned $460,000 in 2003 and the agencies under his
control took in combined revenues of $5.3 million.
His compensation package, then, was close to 9% of gross revenue.
$4.3 million of that revenue came from Medicaid.
Yet we repeatedly hear from health care experts that Medicaid
reimbursements don’t cover the cost of service.
Go figure.
Wyoming
County
’s revelation leads me to believe that there are some significant
efficiencies yet to be discovered in running senior centers and home
health programs. Even if Mr.
Graham had been paid $100,000, then that still leaves almost 7% of gross
revenue which could have been shaved from the budget.
Applying a 7% reduction to senior programs in all 55 counties
would certainly add up to a big savings.
And our seniors in the other 54 counties would be able to lounge
in hot tubs just like
Wyoming
County
seniors do!
If
I were dictator of this state, I’d hire Bob Graham as a consultant.
He can milk cows better than the Amish.
(As talented as he is, though, he should not have milked sacred
cows outside of Hindu territory.)
I’d
pay Bombay Bob $1 million a year and give him 20% of all the money
he’d save the state during years one and two of his contract.
I’d bet that he could save the taxpayers tenfold or more over
what he charged.
As your dictator, I’d also consider hiring former Randolph
County Clerk Rose Lloyd as a consultant.
Ms. Lloyd recently resigned her office over accounting
irregularities. She’s
agreed to make restitution to the county in the amount of $48,000 over
five years.
Given her years of experience in county government, I think Ms.
Lloyd could make a valuable investigator with the State Tax Department.
Ms. Lloyd would not be relegated to adding columns of numbers.
Her contribution would be in recommending tighter financial and
accounting controls. She
knows how the system works and where the weaknesses are.
In that regard, her experience, although tainted, is invaluable.
What I have just suggested might sound like heresy.
It is. But on
Scout’s honor, I promise that I would be a benevolent dictator!
All kidding aside, the rerouting of public money by Mr. Graham and
Ms. Lloyd is nothing new. These
two culprits just happen to be the names in the news right now.
Government financial systems are ripe for finagling.
Across the state, there are thousands upon thousands of accounts
and funds which receive and disburse tax money and few of them ever get
as much as a cursory audit. Using
the case of the Randolph County Clerk’s office as an example, the
state’s auditor discovered some $13,000 missing over a three-month
period. The $48,000
settlement to which Ms. Lloyd agreed was a number pulled out of thin
air. Auditors have not
thoroughly examined
Randolph
County
financial records to determine the actual embezzlement.
For all we know, ten million dollars could be missing.
Each government grant is supposed to be accounted for as well.
But as we recently learned in
Hampshire
County
, education grant money was misdirected—deliberately, no less.
Gov. Joe Manchin has taken the first step toward improving
financial accounting in
West Virginia
. He deserves a commendation
for his initiatives to modernize the State Tax Department’s computer
system. But this first step,
as big as it is, is not going to solve all of the problems.
Whether it’s county governments, boards of education, councils
on aging, or the myriad of other entities that receive and spend
taxpayer money, the state needs to rein in their ability to operate as
personal fiefdoms. Giving a
checkbook to every Tom, Dick, and Boss Hogg is what causes these
problems in the first place.
Gov. Manchin is doing his best to apply good business practices to
running state government. That
said, we should consider requiring each and every government spending
unit to provide us, the shareholders, with audited financial statements.
And along the lines of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we should get
serious about holding the chefs who cook the books liable for their
acts.
David G. Allen,
Clarksburg
,
WV
"Running
Government As A Business" appeared in the April 1, 2005 issue of
the West Virginia State Journal.
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