Like Blood from a Stone…

… government auditors want to get money out of an ACORN.

Auditors questioned about $2 million because ACORN Associates didn’t document open competition by contractors — many of them ACORN affiliates throughout the country.

The inspector general said HUD should demand records that document why contractors were selected and records that justify the lack of competition.

Another $1.2 million was found to have been spent on ineligible activities, such as payroll taxesand workmen’s compensation insurance. A small portion of that money, about $6,000, went for fundraising and political campaigns.

Attorneys for ACORN disputed the inspector general’s findings. Arthur Z. Schwartz wrote that the audit was severely flawed and ignored that ACORN Associates “reached thousands of Americans and helped clean up thousands of homes.”

Now, as an audit professional, I am not entirely sure how “ignoring that ACORN associates reached thousands of Americans,” technically speaking, means that the audit was severely flawed.  I mean, audits are, as a rule, not interested whatever good deed the mis-used money was put to.  What they are concerned with is that government grants and payments weren’t misused by the recipient.  Contracts between related parties should lead to an investigation, since these cannot be arm’s length transactions and would not normally be reimbursable under government regulations — in Medicare, such arrangements would normally be reduced down to cost.

Posted in

Dave in EH

4 Comments

  1. Lynn on November 10, 2010 at 12:58 pm

    Wasn't a real auditor, but worked as a bank auditor. I agree with you, auditors of any kind don't care about touchy feely, they care about possible conflict of interests and well, fraud. Thanks Wyndeward, wish I knew more about you.



  2. DuffTerrall on November 11, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    If their goals were so noble and pure, why would it be any difficulty at all to just get the money honestly? Surely there couldn't be something ACORN was doing that they might have wanted to conceal?!



  3. Dimsdale on November 11, 2010 at 6:41 pm

    Given the choice of calling them stupid or corrupt, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and call them corrupt.



  4. Lynn on November 14, 2010 at 7:20 am

    Glad to know you David Wilson.



frontpg-acorn-nut

The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.