BUSINESS TO REVIEW HARBOR AGENCY AUDIT.Byline: David Greenberg The creator of this article, or someone who has substantially contributed to it, may have a conflict of interest regarding its subject matter. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Daily News Staff Writer In hopes of removing any hint of favoritism regarding a recent audit of the Harbor Department, Auditor Thomas Mahon announced Friday that he will have a private accounting firm review his findings. Supervisors Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels have said the public would have been better served by an independent audit because Mahon is an acknowledged political ally of Pete Pedroff, director of the General Services Agency, which oversaw o·ver·saw v. Past tense of oversee. the Harbor Department during the audit years. ``I felt it necessary to come back and clear the air once and for all,'' Mahon said Friday. ``I have complete confidence in our audit. We did the right job when we gathered the data and we did the right job when we issued the report.'' The audit concluded that from fiscal 1993-97, harbor officials used poor bookkeeping bookkeeping, maintenance of systematic and convenient records of money transactions in order to show the condition of a business enterprise. The essential purpose of bookkeeping is to reveal the amounts and sources of the losses and profits for any given period. practices but did not misappropriate mis·ap·pro·pri·ate tr.v. mis·ap·pro·pri·at·ed, mis·ap·pro·pri·at·ing, mis·ap·pro·pri·ates 1. a. To appropriate wrongly: misappropriating the theories of social science. funds. Nevertheless, he has authorized au·thor·ize tr.v. au·thor·ized, au·thor·iz·ing, au·thor·iz·es 1. To grant authority or power to. 2. To give permission for; sanction: the spending of up to $3,500 so the Sacramento firm Macias, Gini and Co. can determine whether his office complied with accepted auditing standards. The review should be complete in two or three weeks, Mahon said. Mikels' office had mixed feelings about the news. ``That's a nice step but I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if it's far enough,'' said Keith Jajko, administrative assistant to Mikels. ``It's not quite an independent audit. You need a fresh look at funding situations as complicated as the harbor's.'' Mahon brushed aside the prospect of an independent review, however. ``That would just drag the issue on for an indefinite period,'' he said. Mahon's audit took about five months to complete - due, in part, to a plethora plethora /pleth·o·ra/ (pleth´ah-rah) 1. an excess of blood. 2. by extension, a red florid complexion.pletho´ric pleth·o·ra n. 1. of missing records. Auditors could not say whether the harbor's state loan fund was overcharged for services rendered by the harbor staff for state-funded projects or whether those services should have been paid through a separate fund. But the audit did not show any subsidy payments were ever made to the Parks Division directly from the loan fund, which would have been in violation of the county's loan agreement with the state. Jajko said Mahon's office should have asked the state for copies of harbor records amid the audit. But Mahon said those records never would have been sent to the state. ``Remember this, the records may never have existed in the first place,'' he said. |
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