I don't want to ignore a mention of the latest Miami Dade boondoggle. The Miami Herald detailed the findings of a Federal audit on Monday:
A federal audit made public late Monday sharply criticizes Miami-Dade Transit for shoddy financial management and weak internal controls -- including improper accounting for bus fare boxes and a failure to document how federal grant money has been spent.
The audit comes two months after the Federal Transit Administration took the extraordinary step of suspending grant payments totaling about $182 million to the county-run transit agency.
10 comments:
Why am I know surprised. When our own County PD steals from an Environmental Fund (those are my words as I see it), what does anyone really expect from this Administration or Commission.
So many departments have slush funds or sales tax revenue with zero accountability.
Think about what we don't know, that's even more frightening when it comes out OUR tax dollars.
Think about the construction contracts/cost over runs, nephotism running rampant, County Employees w/ benefits far surpassing annual salaries exceeding the private sector.
If anyone outside of government handled federal funds this irresponsibly they'd be behind bars.
What about Geroge Burgess cover up claiming that there was no issues in Transit? He should be fired!
To this, we can ice the cake by saying the the county does not know how to accrue for on-going depreciation. This is why the half penny sales tax went to the metro rail system.
I am concerned about the fiscal health of our county in general. This bad economy has been a real life stress test, and I fear that we are going to find out more than we ever wanted to know about the shell games and the weak links. I don't envy anyone downtown right now. It's easy to criticize, but some of these problems have been years in the making.
On the other hand, you know that when the US government goes wabbit hunting, they are always going to catch wabbits. They did and we're screwed.
I can't imagine the stupidity of any business or government agency head that does not ask where the money goes after it is collected.
If I had oversight of a pop corn stand as part of my larger responsibilities, I would asking the same questions about the money as I would be to my procurement department.
I am sorry, but this falls back on George Bugress, he was a numbers person, he did the budget before becoming king: why wasn't his staff watching the money? I bet he and his staff got a great giggle when the City of Miami parking people had issues with the parking meter money a few years back... I can hear them saying, "geeee, it sucks to be them".
"At the helm of the Miami-Dade Housing Agency, Rene Rodriguez steered millions of dollars toward developers who didn't deliver -- and paved the way for a lucrative future for himself."
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/houseoflies/part7/index.html#ixzz1B3pnkczw
Miami Dade Housing Agency
Gold Tea Cups???or statues???
Batistas Cuba Is Alive and Well In Miami Dade!
Remind you anyone we know VNS!?!?!?!?
Whatever they have done or not done, the problem has to be fixed now. With 32,000 employees, if he can't find anyone there to fix it, they have got to hire some administrative talent to get it done.
The County didn't deliver on new metro rail, but the transit tax wasn't supposed to pay for everything. It was supposed to show that the County was committed to Transit so the Feds would put is at the front of the line for funding. That didn't happen because Transit had papered over more than $50 million in debt. When that came to light, intriguingly only after the transit tax passed in 2002 under then Manager Shiver and Mayor Penelas, the chance of landing "new start" money went to less than zero.
I'm sure former Transit Directors had felt compelled to bury that debt because the agency had been drained by chronic underfunding by the Commission since forever, yet the public and the Commission kept piling on new demands like free service for seniors and for military vets. They insisted on putting new service in place without a clue if ridership would be worth the expense. Departments that got federal funds were safe places to "dump" politically connected yet useless employees or ones that couldn't be fired because of union protections.
This is a byproduct of that abuse.
Remember the guy in charge of transit hasn't been the director very long. In that time, he's erased the deficit, improved morale from what I hear, and radically improved service on the lines that survived service reductions. Service still sucks in that you can't get to where you want to go, but now at least you have a better chance that the bus will show up and get there close to when it is supposed to. Slashing service is no small feat in such a politically charged environment.
New people mover cars have been put into service, new transit cards with modern gates have been installed system-wide, and new metro rail cars are being built. We're finally going to have a rail connection to the Airport. Giant hybrid buses provide express service for kendall and the I-95 corridor. New express buses also finally connect the airport to Miami Beach.
Things seem to be on the right track, but then we find out how sloppy the book-keeping is.
The audit findings are as bad as expected, but at least the response hasn't been to dig in and fight, but to say "you're right, this is bad. Let's work together to fix it." I wish more people would do that.
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