AUDIT CRITICAL OF ASSEMBLY.Byline: Mary Lynne Vellinga Scripps-McClatchy Western Service Former Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr. ran the lower house by fiat and without the normal spending controls one would expect to find at a company or government agency, an independent auditor Independent Auditor An external auditor with a certified public accounting designation that qualifies him or her to provide an auditor's report. Notes: These auditors aren't affiliated with the company being audited. has concluded. But the auditor, Sacramento's Macias & Co., has not uncovered any illegal activity by the former longtime Democratic speaker or anyone else in the Assembly. "It is clear that the Assembly's accounting, payroll and relating administrative functions have largely operated without some of the important control procedures of most other businesses and other governmental agencies such as budgets, supervisory controls, separation of duties and written policies and procedures Policies and Procedures are a set of documents that describe an organization's policies for operation and the procedures necessary to fulfill the policies. They are often initiated because of some external requirement, such as environmental compliance or other governmental ," the report stated. It covered the two-year period ending Dec. 31, 1995. "Generally, they found (the Assembly) was absolutely a chaotic mess in terms of management," said Mark Watts, chief of staff to newly elected Republican Speaker Curt Pringle Curtis L. "Curt" Pringle (born June 27, 1959), is a politician from the U.S. state of California. Pringle, a conservative/libertarian Republican and onetime Speaker of the California State Assembly, is currently Mayor of Anaheim, California and runs his own public relations and . Brown, recently elected mayor of San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The report, to be made public in today's meeting of the Assembly Rules Committee, was supposed to be just the first phase in a $250,000 performance audit examining how well the Assembly complied with its own rules and procedures under Brown. But Assemblyman Brooks Firestone A. Brooks Firestone is currently the Santa Barbara County, California Third District Supervisor. The son of Leonard Firestone and Polly Curtis, he graduated from Princeton University in 1958. , R-Santa Barbara, author of the legislation commissioning the audit, said the procedures themselves are so skimpy skimp·y adj. skimp·i·er, skimp·i·est 1. Inadequate, as in size or fullness, especially through economizing or stinting: a skimpy meal. 2. Unduly thrifty; niggardly. the auditors aren't sure they can do the job. "The contract is running and they're working on it," Firestone said of Macias & Co. "But we know now that a traditional performance audit will be very difficult to accomplish." |
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