On Fair Park Fund Audit, Were You Going to Mention the Missing Five Million Dollars? Ever?

Categories: Schutze

prisoners_smaller.jpg
Wikipedia
City Hall staff shown shortly after least real audit, about 100 years ago.

The city auditor's new bad report on a 27-year-old economic development fund in black South Dallas talks about technical problems with paperwork and mumbles on about the need for better "performance measures." Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when, Mr. Auditor, were you going to tell us about the missing five million bucks?

Talk about a performance measure. Here's your performance measure. Where's our five million dollars? Perform that.

The audit of the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund recently sent to the City Council hints broadly that the fund has been handing out a lot of money over the years without much attention to who's getting it or what's being done -- worthwhile matters of concern, to be sure. But Suzanne N. Smith, a member of the trust fund board who has been looking into its underlying finances, told me Tuesday morning she was surprised to read the audit and find scant mention of the missing moolah.

"I'm surprised that this audit report didn't discuss it," Smith said. "It was to me a golden opportunity to come clean and say, 'Look, we made a mistake, and here is how we are going to completely re-do South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund.'"

Smith declined to comment on the five million dollar figure. Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston told me earlier in the day that's how much may be missing from the fund. Kingston said he has discussed the issue with City Manager A.C. Gonzalez who, according to Kingston, promised some kind of action on it several weeks ago but has said nothing publicly since.

I asked City Auditor Craig D. Kinton why his audit didn;t mention the missing $5 million. He said in an email, "Based on our risk assessments, audits of SDFPT have focused on the grant and loan operations. Previous audit findings identified that the SDFPT did not have established procedures for administering grants and loans and many of the loans were non-performing. More recently, audit findings have shown that established procedures were not consistently followed for the administration of grants and loans. This year we also addressed the lack of performance measures to evaluate whether or not this is an effective program."

Yup. Cool. But what about the $5 million?

I asked Gonzalez the same question. He didn't answer. This is only my opinion, and it could be totally wrong, so I don't want you to rely on it, but I interpret Gonzalez's response as meaning, "I know we spent about $2 million of it on elaborate retirement parties in the Sanitation Department, and the other $3 million, like, who cares, man? Get a life." As I say, that could be way off.

Smith said it's not clear that the amount of money missing from the fund, however much it may turn out to be, is money that ever reached the fund. She said the fund was set up with five separate income streams based on attendance at events at Fair Park, the city's mammoth exposition park and site of the State Fair of Texas. The city's Park and Recreation Department is supposed to make sure the trust fund gets all the money it has coming, but Smith told me it isn't clear anyone at City Hall has been minding that store.

Smith and Kingston's main concerns are for the long benighted area around Fair Park intended to be the beneficiary of the trust fund's economic development efforts. If the trust fund has been systematically underfunded over the years, then the Fair Park area may have been cheated of much needed aid.

But the current city audit hammers home a point made in a succession of similar audits over the years: once money does get into the coffers of the trust fund, it's damn difficult to trace where a lot of it winds up. The audit is awkwardly written and difficult to understand in parts, but it reinforces an impression from earlier reports that the trust fund regards so-called "grants" as gifts.

In one instance, for example, two individuals applied for grants of $5,000 each but were told they did not qualify for the particular grants they were seeking. Rather than send them away empty-handed, the trust fund awarded them $5,000 each anyway under another grant program for which they had not applied and apparently never did apply.

See what I mean? How do you understand that except as, "Here's five grand."

But far from blaming grantees or calling for the elimination of the trust fund, Kingston and Smith want the trust fund to be taken seriously and its mission safeguarded with proper accounting. "We probably aren't doing everything we could for the benefit of that community," Smith told me. "This was basically set aside so that we could do innovative impactful projects and loans to really lift up that community.

"I think the auditor thinks, and this is my personal opinion as well, that we are not achieving that mission. The thing I would underscore is that right now we have a lot of opportunity in Fair Park. And here's this pot of money that is there that may not be being leveraged for its highest and best use."

I get all that. I admire it. Smith and Kingston's view of the matter is a lot more altruistic than mine. I just keep thinking about that five million bucks. If and when anybody ever really does take a sharp pencil to it, will it be that much or much more? And however much it is, which end is it missing from? Did the trust fund never get it? Or did the trust fund receive the money and pass it out the back door uncounted?

This issue probably is one of several dozen like it at City Hall in which people have hidden for years behind a convenient camouflage of bad accounting. It would be nice, just once, to see some numbers on a page. And then there is always the impossible dream -- somebody in an orange jumpsuit.

A15-002 - Audit of South Dallas Fair Park Trust Fund - 10-31-2014 by Schutze



Advertisement

My Voice Nation Help
30 comments
James080
James080

I realize it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but I just have to re-post Carolyn Davis' insightful comments (from the recent Dallas Morning News article) on this audit report:


Davis acknowledged that she hadn’t read the audit. Still, she said, it sounded “unfair.”


City Council member Carolyn Davis.....said the “grants have done a wonderful job.” She said the trust fund was critical to helping neighborhood business owners “reach their potential.

Our city auditor is here to work with the trust fund, not against the trust fund,” she said.

raymondmcrawford
raymondmcrawford

I would love to see an audit of the Jody Puckett/Dallas Water Utilities Fund(an Enterprise Fund) because you know it's got a million questions. We already know that the Trinity toll road project has dipped into it for years to fill the gaps.Every single Enterprise Fund needs to be audited. Specifically, the DEA Aviation Fund is full of question marks since the Love Field component covers a lot of transactions that go unaccounted for. Care to see?

fordamist
fordamist

Perspective:

There was a Q on the 'White Shadow'  Bar Review course when I was in Law School:


Lionel borrow $500,000 to open a bean pie factory. Two days after he got it,  business reverses make him file Chapter 7.  Does he get to keep the Cadillac?

(you're old if you remember the awful tv show,  White Shadow)



Montemalone
Montemalone topcommenter

I'll bet JWP has another safe somewhere.

And it prolly wouldn't hurt to scrape the paint on his Bentley, might find gold underneath.

anon_ymus
anon_ymus

I wonder how many of the missing funds found their way to Fain, Nealy, and John Wiley Punk?

RTGolden1
RTGolden1 topcommenter

Well, they did tear up the intersection of Malcolm X and MLK.  They laid down some brick-type crosswalks and put up some silly columns that make no sense and accomplish nothing.


In Dallas, that kind of work could generate a $5mil expense.

wcvemail
wcvemail

Also, criminals of old had much better hats than do even free citizens today. And none of that "crouching in the prison yard dust, throwing gang signs" for the ol' boys, they stood right up and posed for pictures with some gravitas.

holmantx
holmantx topcommenter

Any comment on the rejection of Disparate Impact's use by HUD to hammer Dallas for discrimination?

http://online.wsj.com/articles/disparate-impact-rejected-1415059893

Any comment on the Supreme Court agreeing to hear Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project. State officials have been sued by the Inclusive Communities Project, a Dallas-based group advocating integrated housing. 

http://www.cutimes.com/2014/10/08/disparate-impact-heads-to-supreme-court-again

It appears HUD's 2013 regulation rewrite to affirmatively further fair housing by use of statistical analysis (Disparate Impact)?  

This is probably why HUD backed off.

everlastingphelps
everlastingphelps topcommenter

Time to send Woo and the blonde guy over to introduce Gonzales to his toilet.

mavdog
mavdog topcommenter

It is interesting that the "Subject" of the report is "Audit of South Dallas Fair Park Trust Fund".

But there was no actual audit of the finances of the South Dallas Fair Park Trust Fund.

Kinton's response to you focused on the "grant and loan operations". The staff is doing a great job of misdirection.

There must be a financial audit of the South Dallas Fair Park Trust Fund. That is what an "audit" should be. That is how we will find out where the $5 Million was spent and who received it.

That is what Kingston, and Smith, should demand from Kinton and his staff. Enough with this charade.

aaronstew2003
aaronstew2003

What are you doing tonight? I'm gonna go home and put together a grant proposal!

James080
James080

SDFPT is little different from Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund, Texas Emerging Technologies Fund, and CPIRT. All were launched with with promises of valuable public benefit, but were (and are) ultimately used to benefit the friends, families and contributors of those controlling the distribution of funds. It's what politician do. It's why they run for office.

Cliffhanger
Cliffhanger

We know it all went for consultants fees. Now, if Schutze will just pony up another $5 million, we can hire some consultants to show us how to figure out which consultants we hired with the first $5 million.


Also, we're building a new tollway along the lagoon.

Voot
Voot

Welcome to Kleptopolis, where everyone wears a raccoon mask and scampers away on pointed little cartoon legs.

OxbowIncident
OxbowIncident

Look, I'm sure everyone would like the city to quit giving money away to nebulous people/projects. I am not for that. I would just like the city to do some public service campaign and post some flow charts on how I can get some of the action.

Montemalone
Montemalone topcommenter

@RTGolden1

Consultants would eat through $5mil before a single brick was laid.

JimSX
JimSX topcommenter

@wcvemail No kidding. Look at that old dude in the middle with his hat in his hand. It's like, "Wilson and Sons, Stagecoach Robberies, Ltd."

86753099
86753099

Neither case has anything to do with Disparate Impact.

wcvemail
wcvemail

@mavdog


Thank you for commenting. Yes, we-who-are-better-than-you will be convening a committee to get to the bottom of this. We must always (blah blah blah) taxpayers' money (blah) best practices (blah) blighted, impoverished area (blah.)

wcvemail
wcvemail

@aaronstew2003

Leave plenty of white space at the top so they can switch grant program names, but don't worry, they'll find a program name and the money for you.

Also, I'm a consultant.

JimSX
JimSX topcommenter

@James080

I don't disagree with you, strangely. All of these programs are based on a central concept: the way to spur business activity is to identify businesses that are not able to thrive as businesses and give them tax money. I don't even know what to call that, as an economic  theory. Palimony?

wcvemail
wcvemail

@James080


"But you knew I was a snake when you picked me up (voted for me)."

JimSX
JimSX topcommenter

@OxbowIncident My own mood would brighten if somebody would just hand me five grand today.

mavdog
mavdog topcommenter

@wcvemail 

They will put on the agenda for the next "Center for Performance Excellence" meeting.

Now Trending

Dallas Concert Tickets

From the Vault

 

General

Loading...