Monday September 29, 2008
It’s only a coincidence that this morning, as Jodi Rell enjoys the first day of a week-long visit with her daughter’s family, including young Tyler her grandson, out in Denver, the Auditors of Public Accounts issued a report critical of her former office: lieutenant governor.
The report for the fiscal years ending June 30, 2005, 2006 and 2007 found that the office routinely skirted established purchase-order requirements. In 5 out of 25 expenditures tested by the auditors, the goods or services were ordered before a REQUIRED purchase order was put into place through the Department of Administrative Services..
The state DAS, which supervises about 20 state agencies on purchases, said the culprit was not current Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele, who’s running the day-to-day operations of the state this week while Rell vacations, but Democrat Kevin Sullivan.
Remember Sullivan?
He was the big loser in the reorganization of the top of state government after the resignation of John Rowland on July 1, 2004. Jodi Rell rose to the top spot, then Senate President Pro Tempore Sullivan was booted to LG, where he served until Fedele took over in January 2007.
Auditor Bob Jaekle of Stratford just told the Blogster that the DAS handling of some agency administration dates back to the reign of Gov. Lowell Weicker, who served one term after forcing the personal income tax on us.
“Weicker started having DAS handle the business functions of his office and lieutenant governor, then several years ago, they began covering ‘smart’ agencies,” Jaekle said. “Some agencies wanted it, but others didn’t. It’s certainly not uncommon now.”
Jaekle said both Sullivan and Fedele “were fairly new” during the audit period.
He said the apparent flaw in the “smart” program of DAS oversight, is that shortcomings can be rationalized by both the offending agency, in this case the LG’s office AND the DAS, which is suppoosed to be in control.
“To me there’s always a question who’s responsible,” Jaekle said. “In this case DAS was the entity that responded to our audit findings. We’re going to eventually be doing an audit that comments on this whole smart-agency situation. When each can point a finger at each other, that’s not a good situation.”
Jaekle thinks that ‘smart’ could actually be SMART and have an acronym. How about Situation Malleable And Retains Tradition?
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