AÂ Democratic candidate for Minnehaha County Auditor, Rose Grant will be running. Rose serves on the City of Sioux Falls Audit Advisory Committee, and has practiced as a CPA in Sioux Falls since 2000. She worked with East, VanDerWoudie and currently with her own firm Grant & Williams.
You can read the Audit Committee’s conclusion on Sioux Falls City Hall’s handling of executive orders: (DOC: Exec-order)
While they don’t use the word ‘Sloppy’ it’s kind of obvious.
Here are some highlights;
BACKGROUND
The City does not currently have a centralized process in place for maintaining written policies and procedures.
RESULTS
We interviewed management, reviewed a sample of Executive Orders and written policies and procedures, and researched best practices for policy maintenance. We identified the following best practices for policy maintenance:
• Policies should be consolidated, maintained, and managed in a centralized location
• Policies should be kept current and changes should be communicated timely
• Policies should have an official custodian
• Employees should attest to policies and procedures that guide their job duties
Policies and Procedures
We found that policies and procedures are accurate and up-to-date, with a few exceptions. We also determined that routine maintenance and employee access could be improved. Following are the results of our testing.
• We found no references to incorrect or outdated fees.
• We noted 6 documents that made references to specific employee names instead of job titles.
• We identified 4 documents that included either outdated references, outdated processes, unnecessary requirements, or conflicting information.
• Of the 273 total documents gathered, 35 (13%) documents are more than 5 years old and 9 (16%) documents are more than 10 years old.
• 23 documents did not have a date listed regarding when it was either created, last reviewed, or last updated.
• Policies and procedures are stored in different areas. Some departments store their policies and procedures on their own shared site on InSite and some departments store them on the department’s shared network drive. In both situations, employees must be granted access to be able to view them.
• There is currently no overarching procedure for maintaining departmental policies and procedures. Each department is ultimately responsible for their own maintenance responsibilities and maintenance schedule. Maintenance of policies and procedures vary widely across all departments.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We made the following recommendation to address the results above.
1) We recommend the City establish and document a plan for managing the approval, issuance, and revision of internal policies and procedures. This should include defining a custodian at the departmental level, requiring scheduled reviews that are dated and initialed to demonstrate completion, and requiring policies to be maintained in an easily accessible, centralized location.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT
The following are opportunities for improvement that were identified during the course of the audit. These opportunities will provide oversight to the policy and procedure documentation processes.
City management should continue to work toward documenting, in writing, policies and procedures that guide specific job roles in the organization. Additionally, policies and procedures should be consolidated as much as practicable to eliminate duplication or unnecessary documents.
Management should consider adding an attestation section to the employee performance evaluation to obtain annual certification from employee’s that they have been trained and understand departmental policies in addition to the certification that they have reviewed the Executive Orders identified in the policy review checklist.
The City should consider providing a formal ethics training for all employees on a recurring basis. The last citywide ethics training was conducted in December 2007. Additionally, the City’s fraud hotline should be more publicized on the City’s intranet so that all employees are aware of how to report fraudulent, illegal, or unethical activities.
UPDATE: What’s that saying about messing up a . . . oh nevermind, Fiddle Faddle was at it again putting the Kabosh on the open records audit, basically saying there just isn’t enough staff to look over 1.5 million hits on the website, while Erpenbach partook in the poo-poo session, she even mentioned that there is software that can handle that stuff. Fiddle made it sound like FOI requests don’t happen very often, so the audit wasn’t necessary. Erpenbach suggested they audit parking instead. If I was there, I would have suggested an audit of the Building Services department for not investigating construction companies doing work without permits.
The Audit Committee has set the agenda for 2017, and it is a big one. The above one should be interesting. See the whole agenda; (DOC: audit-2017Â )
At the Audit Committee meeting, the new auditor, Kim Schroeder was to be confirmed. Her appointment was deferred to the next audit meeting (which I would assume would not be until February).
It was an interesting path to get here;
“The chair has made a concerted effort to improve communication throughout the process,†Neitzert said. “I was able to see how the process worked and I think Councilor Rolfing had heard that criticism and he’s tried to get messages out as the process moved along.â€
While Bill O’Toole, human resources director for the city, wouldn’t say if Schroeder was among those who originally applied for the position, he said his office received 10 more applications during the second phase of the hiring search.
The ‘unofficial’ background noise is that an original pick for the job turned down the position, and since Kim had already applied they re-interviewed her for the position. There’s a lot of other ‘unofficial’ horse trading that went on, that I won’t get into, but I will say this, many of the councilors have expressed optimism with Schroeder and were very happy with the pick. A couple I have spoke to were surprised there was a sudden change in course, the council was not made aware of this deferral until a couple of minutes before the audit meeting by chair Rolfing.
Makes you wonder who was ‘changing the thermostat’ on this deal?
Trust me, I will find us a new auditor.
This is what happens when you don’t involve everyone;
A hiring committee looking to fill long-time internal auditor Rich Oksol’s position is headed back to the drawing board after passing on more than a dozen candidates who wanted job.
Yet councilors didn’t get to see these candidates resumes or interview them;
But the process in which the hiring search is being conducted isn’t sitting well with some city officials who say they’re being left out of the process.
Councilor Theresa Stehly said aside from councilors serving on the three-member search committee, which is composed of Rolfing, Council vice-chair Rick Kiley and one at-large member of the audit committee, the council has been kept in the dark regarding the hiring search.
“I was under the assumption that when we hired someone new there would be several resumes to review – or at the very least we’d review the top three or four and maybe interview those people,†she said. “But I don’t think that’s how this is playing out.â€
Although the final selection does require approval from the full council, Stehly said the search committee will make a selection and ask the Council for an up or down vote of approval.
So what is Rolfing’s response to the lack of transparency and due process;
No matter what that ends up looking like, it’s not likely to include every city council member in the process, he said.
“We’re in the process of developing that so there won’t be any questions later on,†he said. “It’s not something that you do with eight or 10 people on a committee. It just doesn’t work well that way.â€
How would you know if you never tried it? This clown will say anything to protect the secrecy of this appointment.
l3wis