In Ohio: Brunner Asks For Audit Into Blackwell Bungling
by OhioNative - Tue Feb 06, 2007 at 06:44:35 AM PST
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/6/92319/84326"Over the past two weeks much of Ohio’s news media has contributed to an avalanche of misinformation designed to berate and denigrate the state’s new Democratic secretary of state Jennifer Brunner..."
" the specific list of Blackwell's misfeasance or malfeasance:
1. Only 31% ($5.87 million) remained of the current year’s budget for the second half of the fiscal year, necessitating the seeking of additional funding prior to the expiration of the current fiscal year (FY 2007) to meet budgetary obligations and avoid staff layoffs;
2. Blackwell withheld telling Brunner during transition that he paid in excess of $80,000 in bonuses to outgoing unclassified and one recently designated provisional employee. With the exception of the Ohio Senate, no other example of paying such bonuses could be found in any other department of Ohio government;
3. A Brunner transition staff member who was left after one-half day on the job because of the unreasonable rules Blackwell demanded she comply with to be on premise, witnessed "shredding machines in operation." Brunner said those shredders are "no longer in the office, despite representations by current employees that they were purchased by the office." The letter says Brunner’s staffers are "still looking for invoices to document their purchase and/or lease" and now believe the "shredding of documents was outsourced to an outside vendor, Iron Mountain."
4. Transition documents promised to Brunner’s team by Blackwell’s chief of staff, Sherrie Dembinski, were never delivered because they may not have been completed in the first place;
5. Blackwell, from his first year in office in 1999, failed to comply with state law by not sending out corporate charter cancellation letters deemed appropriate by the Ohio Department of Taxation. After years of refusing to notify corporations who had failed to pay their corporate franchise tax that their charters were being cancelled, Blackwell suddenly sent out 9,000 letters in August 2006, then 7,000 in December 2006 and then 50,000 on January 4th, just four days before Brunner would move into his office...."
Much more and lots of links too!
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
