Auditors and fraud

In the Austin American Statesman an article titled, “Austin’s delayed audit comes back clean. This article was about Austin being audit for financial flaws. It had been a seven month delay on Austin’s audit given by an outside auditor, but on Tuesday the report was out. KPMG LLP reported that Austin was good, but they didn’t let Austin get completely off. The auditors found many flaws with Austin’s Convention Center dealing with the money department. In this former department Director Korbert Hodge was allowed to make purchases and do other things without oversight. I feel that this is wrong. By giving anyone this much power it makes it much easier to have fraud and no one would no about it until it was too late. Then the tax payers would be the ones to suffer. Hodge was fired and is now under investigation for his miss use of money as a Department Director, which proves my point of too much power to one person is never good. Now an internal auditor position has sense been added to watch contract compliance, purchasing ext. I think that this position was a much needed and a very good idea and should have been in place to prevent a problem in the first place. The Auditor also found that in 2006 a purchase was made that went against the city charter, because it was made without the city counsels approval; and went over the amount that city manager Toby Futrell could sign off on without the city counsel. I feel that this is really bad, because how does Austin expect the citizens to follow the rules and laws if the leaders don’t. I definitely feel that something needs to be done about this fraud to make sure this never happens again.

Teen Poll

In the Austin American Statesman one articles titled, "Let teens work at poll, former Texas secretary of state suggests." The articles was about Roger Williams, which was the state's former chief election officer saying that in Texas 16 and 17 year old kids should be able to help in the election polls. The problem that I have with this suggestion is that when you get people that are 16 and 17 they tend to be immature and you can't have immaturity work in a state position. This proposal went through the senate, and died even before it got to the House floor. Williams’s things by allowing young people to participate in the part of an election at 16 and 17 years of age, when they reach the age of 18 the students will be more likely to come out and vote. However I think that this proposal will have a small if any effect on the voting turn out of young people. The students that will want to participate in the election polls are probably the ones that would have voted when they became of age anyway so that would not help the problem. So it would leave Texas in the same spot that they started. Williams also said that teens 16 to 17 can work 12 hour days. Where are you going to find a 16 or 17 year old willing to devote 12 hours of their day to the election, its not likely to happen. Even if their were kid that were willing to spend that much time at age 16 an 17 you are still in school therefore you don't have the time to spend 12 hours at a poll when you could be studying for your classes or doing homework. In the legislative session 2007 senator Robert Duncan and R-Lubbock had a proposal that would have allowed kids 16 year of age or older to be an election clerk. This bill cleared the senate but didn't reach the House floor in time. If this is something that the legislator that would really have benefited the youth then it was very unreasonable of them not to make sure that this bill reached the House so that it could go in effect as soon as possible. A Representative named Trey Martinez Fischer filed a proposal that would make it mandatory for high school students to work as assistant election clerks to graduate. What does being an election clerk have to do with school. I don't recall their being any question on a test in school or even on the SAT that ask what you do as an election clerk or in Texas how are the election polls ran. I think that the election polls should be ran by adults 18 years or older and for a representative to even think of making it mandatory for student to have been an assistant election clerk to graduate is ludicrous. I guess that’s going to be one of the TAKs test essays. How was it to be an assistant election clerk?