6 ms·

"EXACTLY! That's a whole pizza and a couple beers EVERY WEEK! And all they have to do is show up to a multi-hour meeting every single week and risk some dumbass

"EXACTLY! That's a whole pizza and a couple beers EVERY WEEK! And all they have to do is show up to a multi-hour meeting every single week and risk some dumbass making a big deal to the whole damn world about them not providing a bible to give an oath over! These corrupt bastards! I have to work for like 10 minutes for those benefits every week! These corrupt bastards!!1!" - HN tonight

somenewaccount1 5y ago
Well, if their pilfering town funds by 'employing' the surpivisors brother-in-law's landscaping company for 8x the normal cost... I'm not saying that's the case, it's a made up scenario, but it's exactly how underpaid public servants "make up the difference", and it's why you need an auditor. The hired CPA wouldn't see anything wrong.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  - amscanne 5y ago
    $1.66mm seems like a lot for a traffic signal at an intersection. I’m sure an auditor could find a at least a few interesting items to dig in to and validate.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      Good thing that the township retained an actual CPA, then. It'd be sketch as hell if a fucking sci-fi author slash real estate agent was in charge of an audit.
      - qwytw 5y ago
        Yes we all know that auditing firms are never thoroughly corrupt/incompetent, nobody could have foreseen Enron or Lehman Brothers (or loads of smaller scale cases)...
        sgjohnson 5y ago
        Wirecard is one of the recent big ones.
        pc86 5y ago
        Oh come on. Nobody said it never happens, but do you have any reason to suspect Maher Dussel is corrupt or incompetent? Do you have any reason to believe this random guy is as qualified as a team of CPAs to audit public sector books?
        qwytw 5y ago
        He's probably not more qualified, but independent oversight of public expenditures serves a valuable purpose. A hired accountant has no incentive to point out that it might be wasteful or unnecessary to spend Y money on a thing X as long as everything is done by the book.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 300bps 5y ago
    With government, the FIRST place you look are benefits to employees. In this case, they are paying $570,906 in 2022 in Pension benefits for 4 active employees. Now they certainly aren't paying $142,726.50 to each active employee so that means they have a string of retired workers that they're paying a good amount of money for. An appropriate thing for an auditor to do is to then research how those employees earned their benefits. Did they "buy 15 years of tenure" for $3,200 thereby increasing their yearly benefit $40,000 per year? Did they "work" 120 hours per week of overtime in their last year to jack up their final year salary? These are real examples from a town near me. None of these things are illegal and won't necessarily be flagged by a CPA who is being paid by the people giving or receiving these benefits. But they sure stand out to taxpayers who are footing the bill! Think about it - all a CPA will do is check to make sure a supervisor signed off that someone worked 120 hours of overtime. They aren't going to investigate how that is even possible or likely.
noduerme 5y ago
wait wait. You're saying they do this thankless job for the pure joy of civic duty? They get nothing out of their position? And so... because they're so pure and selfless, it's fine if they never seat a duly elected auditor? What?
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  No. I'm saying that they will definitely seat the auditor and that the elected auditor is being a dick instead of being a reasonable person about his situation and the fact that his interlocutors are mostly just confused.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Why 'definitely' when they didn't seat the last one?
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        That doesn't even approach answering my question. You're just saying he did things wrong, which is not what I was asking about: why you said he'd 'definitely' be seated.
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        gofkurself 5y ago
      - noduerme 5y ago
dang 5y ago
You posted over 50 flamewar comments in this thread. That's egregious, and we ban accounts that behave this way. I'm not going to ban you right now, but please don't do it again. We want curious conversation here. When you get to the point of fulminating about what "HN" has been saying, or you feel "HN" has been saying, the thread has left the path of curiosity a long time ago, and is well into the brush. We don't want that here. I'm not saying your views are wrong (I have no idea what they are, and no idea what the situation is). But if your views are correct, this is the worst way to advocate for them, because it discredits them. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

somenewaccount1 5y ago

Well, if their pilfering town funds by 'employing' the surpivisors brother-in-law's landscaping company for 8x the normal cost... I'm not saying that's the case, it's a made up scenario, but it's exactly how underpaid public servants "make up the difference", and it's why you need an auditor. The hired CPA wouldn't see anything wrong.

throwawaygh 5y ago
- amscanne 5y ago
  $1.66mm seems like a lot for a traffic signal at an intersection. I’m sure an auditor could find a at least a few interesting items to dig in to and validate.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    Good thing that the township retained an actual CPA, then. It'd be sketch as hell if a fucking sci-fi author slash real estate agent was in charge of an audit.
    - qwytw 5y ago
      Yes we all know that auditing firms are never thoroughly corrupt/incompetent, nobody could have foreseen Enron or Lehman Brothers (or loads of smaller scale cases)...
      - sgjohnson 5y ago
        Wirecard is one of the recent big ones.
      - pc86 5y ago
        Oh come on. Nobody said it never happens, but do you have any reason to suspect Maher Dussel is corrupt or incompetent? Do you have any reason to believe this random guy is as qualified as a team of CPAs to audit public sector books?
        qwytw 5y ago
        He's probably not more qualified, but independent oversight of public expenditures serves a valuable purpose. A hired accountant has no incentive to point out that it might be wasteful or unnecessary to spend Y money on a thing X as long as everything is done by the book.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 300bps 5y ago
  With government, the FIRST place you look are benefits to employees. In this case, they are paying $570,906 in 2022 in Pension benefits for 4 active employees. Now they certainly aren't paying $142,726.50 to each active employee so that means they have a string of retired workers that they're paying a good amount of money for. An appropriate thing for an auditor to do is to then research how those employees earned their benefits. Did they "buy 15 years of tenure" for $3,200 thereby increasing their yearly benefit $40,000 per year? Did they "work" 120 hours per week of overtime in their last year to jack up their final year salary? These are real examples from a town near me. None of these things are illegal and won't necessarily be flagged by a CPA who is being paid by the people giving or receiving these benefits. But they sure stand out to taxpayers who are footing the bill! Think about it - all a CPA will do is check to make sure a supervisor signed off that someone worked 120 hours of overtime. They aren't going to investigate how that is even possible or likely.

noduerme 5y ago

wait wait. You're saying they do this thankless job for the pure joy of civic duty? They get nothing out of their position? And so... because they're so pure and selfless, it's fine if they never seat a duly elected auditor? What?

throwawaygh 5y ago
No. I'm saying that they will definitely seat the auditor and that the elected auditor is being a dick instead of being a reasonable person about his situation and the fact that his interlocutors are mostly just confused.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Why 'definitely' when they didn't seat the last one?
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      That doesn't even approach answering my question. You're just saying he did things wrong, which is not what I was asking about: why you said he'd 'definitely' be seated.
      - throwawaygh 5y ago
        gofkurself 5y ago
    - noduerme 5y ago

dang 5y ago

You posted over 50 flamewar comments in this thread. That's egregious, and we ban accounts that behave this way. I'm not going to ban you right now, but please don't do it again. We want curious conversation here. When you get to the point of fulminating about what "HN" has been saying, or you feel "HN" has been saying, the thread has left the path of curiosity a long time ago, and is well into the brush. We don't want that here. I'm not saying your views are wrong (I have no idea what they are, and no idea what the situation is). But if your views are correct, this is the worst way to advocate for them, because it discredits them. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html