Holy Toledo. I don’t generally read the Peoria Story blog, but Billy Dennis quoted a portion of this post, and it was so shocking I had to read more.

I’ve read past District 150 audit reports (available here*), and they’ve always been bad — bad enough that it makes me wonder why in the world Guy Cahill is still employed by the district. For example, here’s a note from the June 30, 2007 audit report:

In an ideal control setting, the District would have personnel possessing a thorough understanding of applicable generally accepted accounting principles staying abreast of recent accounting developments. Such personnel would perform a comprehensive review procedure to ensure that in the preparation of its annual financial statements that such statements, including disclosures, are complete and accurate.

And this:

The overall internal controls over the District’s accounting system are not adequate to ensure that misstatements caused by error or fraud, in amounts that would be material to the financial statements, may occur and not be detected within a timely period by employees in the normal course of performing their assigned functions.

That was the second year in a row the district got that last note. The 2006-07 audit was also the one that reported the district’s misallocation of over a half million dollars in Title I funds. But evidently the latest audit report takes the cake:

“The November 14, 2008 audit report, prepared by Clifton Gunderson LLP, for the 2007-08 school year, shows the District #150 administrators failed to budget $10,410,849 when budgeting for Teachers Retirement Service (TRS) pension contributions. […]

“This was not a new expense – the district has been budgeting for “on-behalf of” contributions to TRS for years. Their actual expenditure for this item during the 2006-07 school year was $7,264,468. How did they “forget” to budget over $10 million in expenditures – and revenue – for the 2007-08 school year?

“Further, how and why did the TRS provision grow over $3 million in one year? Did teacher salaries increase so much in one year that 10% of that increase amounted to $3 million?

Since the revenues and expenses for “on-behalf of” contributions to TRS effectively cancel each other out, the issue is more about transparency than anything else. If the public were to see that this fund grew by over 43% in one year, they might start asking questions — like, “why is that amount rising so dramatically?” and “what other information is the district hiding?” With omissions this great, how can we believe anything the school administration says about the budget and the need to close a high school? Incidentally, the “on-behalf-of” contributions are not on the 2008-09 budget that was submitted to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), either.

Something I’ve always wondered is how District 150 can keep sending incomplete reports to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). For instance, the last three years (2006-2008) of the district’s Annual Statement of Affairs (available here*) leaves required information completely blank, including salary schedules and non-salary payments over $2500. It is required by the State that the district report this information, and yet it hasn’t for multiple years, keeping taxpayers (and the State regulating agency itself) in the dark. With as many administrators and consultants as District 150 has, surely someone could be tasked with completing required reports.

These questions deserve answers. The information reported on Peoria Story has been forwarded to District officials. It will be interesting to hear their response.

*Note: If you want to look up the financial data or Statement of Affairs reports on the ISBE website, they’re listed by the district’s code number, which is 48-072-1500-25.