{"id":1479,"date":"2011-10-14T17:58:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T21:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=1479"},"modified":"2011-10-14T19:07:29","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T23:07:29","slug":"kennett-audit-%e2%80%94-and-auditor-%e2%80%94-raises-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=1479","title":{"rendered":"Kennett audit \u2014 and auditor \u2014 raises concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

The release of the 2009-2010 audit of <\/em>Kennett<\/em> <\/em>Township<\/em> has been the subject of controversy for some residents and political figures since its introduction in July<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By P.J. D’Annunzio<\/span><\/strong><\/span>,<\/span> Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>KENNETT \u2014 With one side arguing a lack of transparency and questions about how money was spent and the other claiming politics trumping common sense and township employee’s right to privacy, the most recent audit of the township’s finances has become a central issue of this year’s election race for Township Supervisor.
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The township\u2019s release of its 2009-2010 audit has raised some eyebrows over its seemingly mysterious auditor and has been a point of contention in this election year as Township Supervisor hopeful Scudder Stevens alleges a lack of transparency in the Township\u2019s governance. Stevens faces incumbent supervisor Allan Falcoff in the November election.
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Citizen groups, such as the Kennett Township Residents for Good Government, have also claimed that Board of Supervisors\u00a0is being secretive about the nature of the audit, while township officials argue that they’ve done nothing out of the ordinary and are merely seeking to protect the privacy of township employees or protect matters relating to litigation, as allowed by law. In an attempt to clarify certain expenditures and address the concerns regarding the identity of the accountant responsible for the audit, Stevens pursued the issue with the township.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Stevens submitted an open records request,\u201d Township Manager Lisa Moore said, \u201cUnfortunately, we had to go through the process with our attorneys because half of those documents are not legally allowed to be released\u2026there was attorney\/client information on them. The QuickBooks (an accounting software package used by many small businesses and local governments) disk that he wants; I can\u2019t give those out with everybody\u2019s Social Security information, their spouses\u2019 Social Security numbers, their healthcare information\u2026I would be sued. We had to go through our attorneys to find out what\u2019s legal and what\u2019s not\u2026he (Stevens) thinks the employee module can just be removed, you can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Stevens, however, contends that the dissemination of the information is guaranteed to all those who seek it by Pennsylvania\u2019s \u201cRight to Know\u201d law.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I asked for was a backup of the QuickBooks accounting records for the township,\u201d he said, \u201cThe state said that\u00a0it was public information and that I was entitled to that information. I certainly agree that the personal information enclosed therein should be redacted, and it can be done, probably easier than doing it manually. What it requires is to take a backup of the material, load it up in the program, and go in and put \u2018X\u2019s where the social security numbers are. If there\u2019s anything there regarding personal health or addresses, redact it\u2014take it out\u2026it\u2019s a simple straightforward thing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the auditor himself \u2014 and his seeming sudden disappearance \u2014 appears to be a point of controversy, too.<\/p>\n

The audit is credited to Ed Johnson of a company known as SGR & Co. <\/span>Stevens said he made inquires about Johnson and SGR, wanting to know about how the audit was done, but was unable to locate him or the firm.<\/span> A further search conducted by The Kennett Times<\/em>, consulting with local Certified Public Accountants, turned out nothing on the whereabouts or the history of the elusive accountant or the company.
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According to the audit report, SGR & Co. was based in Wilmington, Del. All Certified Public Accountants practicing in Pennsylvania and Delaware are required to be registered within those states. The Delaware Society of Certified Public Accountants had no listing for Johnson or SGR.
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Subsequent questions have been directed to the township supervisors, who said, to the best of their knowledge, that Johnson retired in May of 2011, and left no phone number or forwarding contact information other than that of\u00a0a P.O. Box.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of Johnson\u2019s current whereabouts, Township Supervisor Michael Elling \u2014 one of the supervisors who put out the request for proposal for auditors \u2014 said he is equally mystified, but indicates that the township is in no hurry to locate him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have any requirement to do that and we haven\u2019t had any reason to,\u201d he said, \u201cI suppose we could spend our time doing it but, you know, we\u2019ve got a lot of other things to do\u2026and that\u2019s going to be a time sink.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years we elected township auditors,\u201d he continued, \u201cBut for political reasons, we were accused of strange things and we decided that we didn\u2019t need that kind of harassment. So we did away with having our auditor do it and went to a CPA. If you look into the method of auditing, our auditors did a much more thorough job than the outside auditor\u2026they went through every invoice and balanced everything. An outside auditor doesn\u2019t do that, they sample.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For more information regarding the history of the audit, see http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=935<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The release of the 2009-2010 audit of Kennett Township has been the subject of controversy for some residents and political figures since its introduction in July By P.J. D’Annunzio, Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com KENNETT \u2014 With one side arguing a lack of transparency and questions about how money was spent and the other claiming politics trumping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[266,168,38,55,248],"class_list":["post-1479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-audit","tag-budget","tag-election-2011","tag-kennett","tag-township-supervisor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}