Who said what when and who will say what when about the audit will be issues before the City Council again Monday night. So return with us now to the meeting of the council’s Finance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee on Feb. 17, when auditor Curtis Averette made his one and only public appearance concerning the 2004 audit.
It was at that FAIR meeting that council member Elissa Yount presented a list of audit-related questions that she wanted Averette, Finance Director Traig Neal and City Manager Eric Williams to answer separately.
In an article today about Yount’s quest for audit answers, The Daily Dispatch reports that Yount was responsible for the FAIR Committee’s decision not to receive Averette’s report or ask him questions Feb. 17: “Yount asked that the meeting be rescheduled because she had an extensive list of questions for which she feared Averette was not prepared. It was also during that meeting that council decided, after a request by Yount, to have an open forum on the city’s budget and specifically fund balance, which occurred Feb. 28.”
Well, the date of the public forum is accurate, but a recording of the FAIR meeting shows that Yount was prepared to proceed with the audit questions that night and that she thought the entire matter could be dealt with in 30 minutes.
Yount did cut off Averette’s initial presentation of the audit.
As Williams turned the discussion over to Averette, Yount asked to read a statement first.
FAIR Chairman Bernard Alston hesitated. “Is it something we need to hear before we hear the report?”
“I think so,” Yount said.
She passed out copies of a statement and took six minutes to read it to her fellow council members. It included a list of specific questions that Yount said arose from her reading of the audit.
Yount asked for an “exhaustive inquiry” into the audit, with questions asked separately of Averette, Neal and Williams.
“When are you proposing to do this questioning?” Alston said.
“We can do it today, or we can do it at another time if you choose if you think we don’t have time today,” Yount said.
“I don’t think we have time,” Alston said. “You’re asking for something that no one here, including me, saw until now for a meeting about an audit that when I walked in here at least I thought the only thing we were going to do was essentially receive Curtis’ report, not necessarily dissect it at this point. I think the dissection should take place. … I don’t think we have the time to do it today.”
Alston, not Yount, then suggested scheduling that dissection for another time, which wound up being the two-hour forum before the full council meeting Feb. 28.
Yount was willing to wait, with the understanding that the council would delve into the audit in detail at the public forum.
“Curtis would have to come back,” Yount said. To this day, he has not.
Before giving up on the audit for the night, Alston asked Williams, Neal and Averette whether they were prepared to answer Yount’s questions and those from other council members on the spot.
“You need to decide if you want an inquiry or an open dialogue,” Williams said.
Alston said he wanted “an open inquiry.”
Neal said it would be “almost impossible” to answer questions out of the blue regarding a document as big as the audit report for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2004.
Averette said he “would be more willing and more comfortable” answering Yount’s questions, either alone or with Williams and Neal, outside a public forum.
“Some may still need to be brought to a forum to have them answered or put into the record,” said Averette, an accountant with the Henderson firm of William L. Stark & Co.
“I want it in the public forum, please, since it’s the public’s business,” Yount said.
When Alston pressed Averette on his ability to answer Yount’s questions that night, the auditor said: “Some of the questions I could answer. Some I would need to check on.”
After Williams suggested putting off the discussion until another day, Alston said: “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to schedule a forum … specifically to review the budget.”
While the recording of the meeting makes clear that it was not Yount’s idea to delay Averette’s presentation or to hold the public forum, it doesn’t show much about the auditor’s understanding of his role in the public forum.
Averette has said he did not attend the forum because he did not receive a written list of questions to address at that public event. But he has not explained why he did not answer Yount’s Feb. 17 questions, either at the forum or in writing.
Nothing on the recording suggests that the council planned to submit a further list of questions before the forum, but Neal did discuss the difficulty of answering audit questions on the fly.
Three months later, Williams is days away from presenting his 2005-06 budget proposal, Neal is little more than a week away from returning to private practice as an accountant, and Averette still has not appeared to formally present and discuss the audit. Averette has suggested a private meeting with Yount in July; Yount has rejected any meeting that isn’t open to the public.
On Monday night’s City Council agenda, Yount again is scheduled to discuss the need for the auditor to appear to answer questions in public.