November 30, 2007
Morning Roundup: Slippery When Wet Edition
A happy Friday to you, Washington. Hopefully you all made it in to work on time despite Metro having reduced the speed of their rail cars in several areas this morning. Speed restrictions were in place until 8:10 a.m. along portions of the Orange line in Maryland and Virginia, the Red line from Union Station to Silver Spring and from Shady Grove to Grosvenor, and the Green line from Branch Avenue to Congress Heights due to slippery conditions caused by the combination of fall leaves and morning dew. Those restrictions have now been lifted.
Auditing Firm Threatens to Quit: The Post's David Nakamura is reporting that the auditing firm BDO Seidman, which performs the District government's annual financial audit, is threatening to quit. BDO's concern stems from questions from Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham to the firm about whether the company had "bonding or insurance," which company officials have interpreted as the threat of legal action. The firm is asking for assurances that the city has no plans to sue them in the wake of the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement scandal. Attorney General Linda Singer responded that the city has no current plans to sue BDO, but stopped short of promising never to do so.
Thomas Jefferson is Nation's Top High School: U.S. News & World Report has put out its first ever rankings of America's best high schools, with top honors going to Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Five other schools in the D.C. area also made the top 100 list - two in Fairfax and three in Montgomery County. Those of you who went to Thomas Jefferson can now spend the day thinking you're better than the rest of us while we call you nerds behind your backs.
Briefly Noted: Police investigating a fatal accident near 14th and Euclid Streets NW, causing road closure ... Wheaton woman abducted and robbed ... Big changes needed to save Chesapeake Bay.
This Day in DCist: In 2006 we interviewed Joshua Czarda of Ravenchase Adventures, and in 2005 we were bummed to have missed out on snagging an undated Metrobus transfer.
Photo by christaki
|
"See it, Say it"
Ok fine....Wet leaves!
"Excuse me, are those your wet leaves?"
And shouldn't the current City Council members that were part of the council during the scandal also take some of the responsibility? Everyone wants to point fingers but no one is willing to take even a shred of blame. The DC Auditor warned of some irregularities to the council and those members seem to have done nothing with those warnings.
Also, I'm a bit concerned about huge pile of hundreds stacked up around the DC auditor's office. Shouldn't they be in the bank? Or at least rubberbanded together in groups of $10,000s!
I like how Jimmy Graham's threat caused Vince Gray to have an ulcer. If the auditing firm stops their audit, say goodbye to DC's credit rating. The firm has the city by the short hairs right now, and Gray at least recognizes it. Too bad Graham doesn't.
Which brings up another question: Why is the same firm being used every year to perform the city's audits? I believe Sarbanes-Oxley requires publicly-traded companies to switch auditing companies on a regular basis. Why not the same practice for the DC gov't? Otherwise you run the risk of auditors and the auditees getting too cozy with one another. I say bring in new auditors through competitive bidding and get rid of one company doing all the audits each year.
I think most TJ graduates already think they are better than you.
but the question is: should a magnet school be ranked against other schools that have to take everyone they get? It doesn't seem quite fair. as the child and nephew of products of New Trier High School in north suburban Chicago, who were all lead to believe that it was the best public high school in the country -- at at nearly $20k per pupil you would hope so! -- I heard this complaint a lot growing up about these rankings. but perhaps it's true?
I thought T.J. was in Alexandria.
(clicks over to Wikipedia...)
Oh, I see. It's in Alexandria, but operated by Fairfax. And, damn, Alexandria kids can't even go. That sucks.
And I guess I'll be the first one to point out that this is the best public high schools. I kind of wish they'd mix in the private schools. Not to stroke their velvet-lined egos, but because comparing public high schools is mostly only a helpful exercise when you're deciding to move somewhere. Once you're living in one place, your choices of public high schools is normally pretty limited, whereas you probably have many private schools to choose from. So, for example, it would be helpful for someone living in Bethesda to know how does Walt Whitman really stack up next to Sidwell, or whatever.
Oh and check this out. DC is about to get Da Vinci-coded. And so it begins that people with limited knowledge of DC start saying things like the Capitol is at the geographic center of the city, and that a square and compass shape is formed by the streets (if they were so diabolical, why couldn't they have actually built an avenue from Mt. Vernon Square up through Logan to 16th st., or built Rhode Island to reach Washington Circle?).
This is my favorite quote:
"The shape of a square and compass is also formed by drawing a line on the map between two of the city's major landmarks, the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, and along the walls of the White House and the Jefferson Memorial.
At the center of these stands the George Washington monument, a vast brick obelisk whose dimensions themselves are symbolic: 555 feet high by 55 wide (170 meters by 17)."
For one thing, the angles are off. For another, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials were built in the 20th century, well after our masonic overlords had moved on to the grand lodge in the sky. Also, the Washington Monument doesn't even line up correctly.
Also: brick? What?
"The firm has the city by the short hairs right now.."
If the city did things right, then the firm has signed a contract to perform work.. but verifying the bonding/insurance should have been part of the qualifications process (was there even a quals process?), so it's not clear that the city did things the right way in the first place..
The firm is acting very unprofessional, imo. It doesn't appear that Graham was making a threat in any way. The firm is trying to use the question and the congressional mandate to coerce a 'get out of jail free card' out of the city, which is a little suspicious if you ask me.
Auditing and Fraud Investigations are different. During a normal audit they may find that the percentage of something (in this case refunds)is out of whack compared to a benchmark. They will randomly examine specific documents and their backup. I imagine that they had all the required paperwork filled out and the necessary signatures for the fake refunds.
For Fraud detection they would have to go deeper and research the individual companies mentioned (like: Bilkmore) and or contact the entities that originally paid the tax bills to see if they were in agreement with the "refund" being paid to a third party.
How the Tax Office was ever allowed to give refunds in the name of a third party is beyond logic.
It's actually really easy to miss fraud when detecting an audit. Believe it or not, most fraud is uncovered through fraud interviews with the client where people admit to seeing or hearing things around the office. Also there are fraud hotlines that people actually do call.
$20M is not a hefty sum to many US Government agencies. This $20M+ was done over the course of many years, so say approximately $2M a year. Auditors generally look at payments over a certain scope with are material to the audit. I would imagine this woman had the sense to not pay herself $1M at a time.
I'm not sure how long BDO has done this audit, but they definitely should have tested internal controls. If they did everything properly, they should not be sued.
Reid,
TJHS is located squarely in Fairfax County. The zip code is part of Fairfax that identifies itself as Alexandria, it not part of Alexandria City proper. In fact the school is more in Annandale or North Springfield than anything else.
Wet leaves? Holy shit! This is a huge crisis for Metro, because everyone knows that in the history of railroads, wet leaves have never fallen upon train tracks before.
Given the leveling tendency of adolescent society, now made law by our C-student president’s No Child Left Behind program, there is a need for even more Gifted and Talented programs, in middle schools as well as high schools.
Hooray Congrats TJ!
As an alum, I'm beaming with pride. Even tho I haven't made much of myself since graduating...
"but time makes you older, children get older, and I'm getting older too..."
Forget the wet leaves. Morning Dew? zOMG!!!1!@! WMATA thought they were supposed to be looking out for Mountain Dew!
What if a stray deer slipped on those dewy leaves? Won't someone think of the children?
turkey- railroads have always struggled with wet leaves in the fall. NJ Transit has a multi-million dollar machine to clean leaves from tracks, and they still have problems. trains can only carry so much sand on board.. and I'm not sure if metro trains even have an on-board sander.