By Emerson Drake
1/26/11
What was supposed to be a quiet session on Tuesday became disputed when the attorney for the MID refused to allow a request for more information from the public regarding money lost by the MID to be explained in greater detail.
On the agenda was a request from staff to switch from the Bank of New York based in Los Angeles to Wells Fargo of San Francisco.
We had a discussion with knowledgeable insider why suggested that MID had lost considerable money due to alleged mishandling of their account. MID’s Lou Hampel suggested under further questioning that no money had been lost but “staff time” had to be used to unravel several problems that BNY should have handled themselves.
We find the idea that staff time was the reason for changing bond trustee’s to be short of the mark and the MID’s refusal to come clean regarding their actual losses to be business as usual.It isn’t uncommon for the consent calendar of the MID to pass without discussion despite the fact that Millions of dollars $ 42.7 Million this meeting alone being distributed, but Cecil Hensley had a few question that Lou Hampel couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
When asked by Director Hensley to explain a %521 thousand dollar payout to the city of Modesto, Lou’s first response was “I don’t know.” When pressed by Cecil his second response was “I’ll get back to you.”
Now Lou Hampel became defensive to Hensley’s request for more detail on the A/P payment register(a list of all outgoing monies) by saying “just how low would you like me to go?”
Hensley rightly pointed out they(staff) had broken down to rental center to as little as $82.41 and $126.07 and didn’t think breaking down a payout of over $521 thousand to Modesto under the heading of "Multiple Projects" unreasonable.In order to save Lou’s composure and credibility Allen Short jumped in and made the claim it was all for taxes.
But if that was the case why didn’t Lou Hampel know the supposedly obvious details since that was his portion of the agenda?Spending the ratepayers money without giving a financial accounting to the public is business as usual for Allen Short’s MID but doesn't engender trust nor should it.The MID board just sat silently not becoming involved in the discussion.Again this is business as usual.
MID continual quest secrecy from their owners, the ratepayers cannot and should not be tolerated.Will it end?Not while this Board of Directors and General Manager Allen Short are in power
