TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Buddy Johnson's Fiscal Moves Don't Add Up For Taxpayers

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 13, 2008

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson's tenure has been plagued by questions - about hush-up payments to a former aide, his failure to his pay property taxes on time, even his willingness or ability to forthrightly explain his office's operations.

So when Johnson announced last month that the Hillsborough County Clerk of Courts office would no longer handle finances for the elections office, something didn't smell right. After all, it was the clerk's office that objected to Johnson paying a former public relations director Steve Holub more than $24,000 to go away and to keep his mouth shut about what he saw in the elections office.

Johnson at first said severing ties with the clerk's office was a way to pay poll workers quicker and promised it wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime.

But that's really not so.

Johnson will be paying poll workers on Election Day because he set up a separate account to handle those checks, which used to take about three weeks to get to poll workers. As further evidence that Johnson seems oblivious to the ramifications of his moves, he sees nothing wrong with an elections chief facing re-election handing out checks to potential voters on Election Day.

The bottom line is Johnson could have asked the clerk's office to cut checks to poll workers earlier if it was too much to ask poll workers to wait three weeks to get paid.

Then there's the question of whether Johnson really needs to bring his accounting in-house, which he tells the Tribune is the real reason he is cutting ties with the clerk's office.

Johnson presented the Tribune with 2007 documents showing the clerk's office warned him that his office was likely to be marked with a "significant deficiency" during its annual audits because it did not have someone with the expertise to prepare financial statements for the auditors.

At about the same time, the election's office chief's bookkeeper was retiring from a position that paid about $55,000. Johnson said he reclassified the position to one with more duties, and brought on a seasoned accountant with an impressive resume to take over the elections' office fiscal operations, including preparing materials for the auditor. He's paying her nearly $89,000 a year.

Not only are the new accountant's salary and benefits higher, but Johnson will have to purchase accounting and payroll software that will run somewhere in the neighborhood of $35,000.

Even taking into account Johnson's contention that the new accountant's expertise has brought cost-savings of about $20,000, taxpayers are still paying more compared to paying the clerk's office about $11,000 to handle the election's office finances. Johnson said he never inquired how much it would cost to have the clerk's office perform duties that would satisfy the auditors.

Voters expect Johnson to run a competent and transparent office, while demonstrating a measure of fiscal restraint. During this time of budgetary trauma, all constitutional officers should be scrutinizing their budgets for savings, not spending more money on new systems.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT