Except this place has a better excuse in that they are a township of ~9k people where the board of supervisors get paid 3k a year (read: are not full time). I could totally imagine the part time small town government not really knowing how things should work and flying by the seat of their pants like this.

That’s an extraordinarily generous reading of the facts.

Captain Obvious checking in, it's more like they really don't want an independent auditor. People focusing on their compensation are not looking deep enough, there's probably some preferred vendor or other grifting going on that leads back to a family member.

Maybe, maybe not. It is pretty wild that everyone assumes some financial conspiracy. I think it is at least as likely they just don't want random wackadoos adding to the bureaucracy.

Elected positions might be wackadoo but they’re not random. Their refusal to seat a duly elected candidate for office is not valid legally and it’s not valid as a principled rejection of governing structure they object to. They could (however undemocratically) try to eliminate the role. But they can’t just ignore the election because it doesn’t suit them, without scrutiny.

Of course I agree you shouldn't ignore election law. I was commenting on how everyone is so sure they know exactly what the motive was.

True story, I promise it’s relevant:

When I was in my early 20s, I lived in a shared house with some other early 20-somethings. They were all off the beaten in some way, but more or less had their shit together. When I moved in, I certainly did not have my shit together. And I had never lived with other young adults who did.

I had been in the bad habit of leaving my dirty dishes in the sink, as had all of my former cohabitants. But these new roommates did not operate this way. One of them confronted me about it. I apologized, cleaned up my shit, and… repeated the whole behavior.

Again I was confronted. I apologized again, and next came the more important confrontation (paraphrasing, no way I could recall the exact wording): we already talked about this, you know what the expectation is, you just didn’t respect that. Well, that was true. It stung, and maybe it was a bit blunt, but it was inescapably true.

I didn’t even intend to leave my responsibilities for other people to take care of. But I was definitely, knowingly, leaving a mess they’d have to work around. Because I was prioritizing my own time allocation without regard for others.

Anyway, how all of that’s relevant: this township has done this before. It’s implausible that they’re ignorant of it, the second time. Especially as a cohort, where some will have better recall and a stronger inclination to improve than others. That leaves only the possibility that their motive falls within the range of motives for knowingly disregarding an election result, again as a cohort. Maybe I lack imagination, but I think the only reasonable conclusion is corruption.

You don’t know much about how local government operates.

I do. In small towns like this, it's not really money. They tend to just favor people they know. It's more bias or conservatism than corruption. Things are more comfortable when you're dealing with people you know. Sure people get favors and side business and such but in total, it doesn't really add up to a whole lot.

You just described corruption. Regardless of how many dollars it is about in the end.

I can think of 0 valid reasons to ghost and undermine your elected auditors.

Did they ghost him or did he ghost them first? From what I can tell he had absolutely no idea about or even contact with the people he was supposed to audit/work with until long after the election had taken place.

So he turns up one random day to do his job and is surprised that he isn't on the agenda. I repeat, he never even talked to these guys after his election, never checked in with them to even properly organize things. Instead he just assumed "they would know".

> and undermine your elected auditors.

Given how much he just assumed will happen and failed to properly plan and ensure will happen he is doing quite a good job at helping them with it. And after all that his idea of fixing things is to write a 20+ tweet complaint on twitter. If these people are as corrupt as some here think they must love that guy, they couldn't have found a more superficial incompetent guy for the job if they tried.

go along to get along?

I would rather say be proactive and communicate, preferably in a professional manner. Walking around deliberately unaware with blindfolds on by "assuming" everything is more a skill I would expect from the "go along to get along" crowd, which is why I mean that corrupt people could hardly find a better drop in replacement for him. A passive and ignorant auditor that has to be spoon fed everything is hardly going to uncover any relevant corruption.

Why are you assuming I'm taking a stance here? I didn't say it's a good excuse just that the issue is more biases than ulterior motives.

For one thing you’re saying it’s not corruption. Nepotism and corruption don’t require ulterior motives. I do find your comment is excusing and normalizing “favoring people you know”.

I’m sure it happens, probably in my locality as well. That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable or that it shouldn’t be scandalized. The big fishies in the small ponds apparently need to be reminded of the standards they’re held to from time to time.

It's not corruption unless there is intent to defraud. That is not the case. As a formerly elected official in a small town the issue was simply that we didn't have the resources. We were all basically volunteer as our pay was a few hundred a year. Elections were ran as simply as they could be as the most we could put in was an hour or two per week. Running the meetings alone were a huge hassle. There was an overwhelming sense of just sticking to the status quo as that was the simplest thing to do.

From the outside, we certainly had plenty of folks calling us corrupt for not always getting 3 closed bids on every project or paying Joe under the table for cutting grass. Were these true allegations? Yes, but it wasn't corruption. What do you do when the grass needs to be cut because if it's not, we'll get rats in the town hall and no one responds to you calls? You call Joe who cut just your personal grass the other day and ask him to please just get it done asap because no one has time. This isn't done because we're trying to get a favor, we just needed it done quickly and reliably.

Do you also think it’s not discrimination if it’s because you just can’t afford to take a shot with a non-white or woman, if your experience tells you that white men are easier to deal with?

After all, there’s no ulterior motives in racial or sexual bias when it comes to hiring either, right?

Of course it’s easier and feels better to let the scant public funds go to people you know. That doesn’t mean it’s not corruption.

> This isn't done because we're trying to get a favor, we just needed it done quickly and reliably.

You still seem hung up on that there needs to be some form of quid-pro-quo or personal gain going on to count. That is not the case.

And well, there’s a clear difference in scale between asking Joe to cut the grass and not proactively putting the offer out (which still counts but is what it is) vs actively denying authority (however little) of your own publicly elected auditors for several years.

> From the outside, we certainly had plenty of folks calling us corrupt for not always getting 3 closed bids on every project or paying Joe under the table for cutting grass. Were these true allegations? Yes, but it wasn't corruption.

You are quite literally admitting to corruption. You’re justifying it for a common good, which… is emotionally understandable but also basically how well-meaning people justify interacting with every level or scale of corruption.

What you are describing is nepotism.

Only in very specific contexts, and usually when money is involved. Officials are allowed all kinds of biases. They can run together and endorse each other.

Yeah, that's normally considered bad.

Yeah, it's really powered by favors, in my experience. This doesn't have to be an inherently bad thing in small communities, as it gets things done, but it's obviously unfair to outsiders.

What? Of course it's inherently bad! Why does the size of the community matter? Is corruption quaint if the place it's happening is small enough?!

Sort of, yeah. It’s like the moms in the PTA going on a power trip and increasing the per parent budget from $5 to $6 dollars for the year, then later realizing the money was all spent on snacks for their meetings.

Only if you consider favors corruption. I'm guessing you are imagining pretty different situations

it’s unlikely you’d be happy living where the letter of the law is followed exactly and consistently

I would be more happy if it was... when it is not followed exactly the execution of the law gets to pick favourites on who and when they decided to enact the laws.

When laws are followed, people tend to be much more careful on the laws they write.

That sounds most likely to me, as it’s exactly how I would feel if I were in their position.

But that doesn’t make it right. If you are dealing with elected offices you need to deal with whomever is elected.

Totally agree. The question is then what it means to deal with them. In a way, they are already dealing with them by saying there is nothing for you to do an your services are not needed.

The part that was missing from the twitter thread is a reply stating the scope of the auditor role not covered by the CPA, and an affirmation that they seek to carry out this duty.

I guess my take comes down to Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. The council doesn't know what he wants to do after election and he didn't spell it out for them. It seems that they want to be (1) publicly sworn in and (2) change township processes somehow so that they can be a more effective community watchdog.

Why is it pretty wild? There are tons of scammers, crooks, etc., this stuff is common place, not abnormal.

Humans tend towards greed and lining their own pockets, just look at any dysfunctional government that has ever existed. I would not be surprised that half the politicians in office in thw US are taking bribes or dealing under the table. There are numerous public examples, you can guess that its only the tip of the iceberg.

The city has an independent auditor. It's a mid-sized firm in a sizable metro with a bunch of CPAs. Literally no incentive to lie on an audit of a tiny township with a miniscule budget.

CPA's will only verify that the funds were indeed spent as reported. Basically, that the ledger is balanced and funds weren't outright stolen.

They won't identify that specific vendors, possibly related to the supervisors, are over paid for thier services.

The likes on Enron, Worldcom and Bear Stearns all had "independent" audits.

Everyone knows auditors only have the capacity to look at a small sample of records; and that difficult, demanding auditors don't get appointed next year.

> miniscule budget

$14 million?

I participate in town government.

There is more incompetence than malice. There are well intentioned people trying to navigate conflicting laws, statues, bylaws, and codes of conduct.

You ask three different people the same question and get four answers.

When I read this situation it sounds almost normal.

I can't imagine anyone reading this story and thinking, "Oh, this must just be a series of unfortunate accidents by naïve supervisors."

"Not knowing how things work" is only an excuse up until someone explains to they, "I was elected, here is the law," and they deliberately refuse to acknowledge it

(The reason people run for these obscure, low-paying jobs is so they can get rich on the taxpayers' dime - so they can rezone and procure and otherwise redirect money and influence to their own interests. No one does it as a fun hobby.)

> No one does it as a fun hobby

Most people I’ve met doing anything like this for less than minimum wage are absolutely doing it for fun, or to help their communities.

If they sometimes assign the job to their friend Josh instead of the faceless general contractor 3 towns over, can you blame them?

And if that friend Josh then sometimes pays them 10% in kickbacks, can you blame them for taking it? They are putting so much work in for so little, after all.

You missed the part where they did exactly the same thing to someone 6 years prior, including sending the same email, and so on.

What does that imply?

That they are very keen on not having a board of auditors because there is something they think those auditors could do they don't want done. For instance, uncover corruption.

Or, you know, they still have the same accounting firm, and the situation hasn’t changed at all since last time.

Only this auditor is more persistent.

I don't think it's reasonable to believe they are ignoring the law just because they are lazy or think the accounting firm makes the auditors unnecessary. If they didn't care, they would just swear in auditors and let them preform their other duties as the law requires.

or they are lazy