Really, Wendy? “News to me”?
Just a quick follow-up to jvwalt's piece about yesterday's debate for Treasurer.
If you listened to the whole debate, or read today's story about it in the Free Press, you might have caught a very revealing exchange between the two candidates.
Remember, Beth Pearce is the incumbent State Treasurer and Wendy Wilton is the current Rutland Treasure. You know, the person in charge of staying on top of Rutland's finances.
Anyway, here's how the Free Press reports the exchange:
Robert Giroux, executive director of the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank confirmed that Rutland is one of 10 communities on a watch list. When Rutland applied for a loan last year, Giroux said, “We saw they had an unfunded pension liability that was good-sized.”
“That's news to me.” The person in charge of Rutland's finances doesn't even know that Rutland was on the state Municipal Bond Bank's watch list, and has been on that watch list since June.
Whether it's a bad thing to be on the watch list may be open to question, but as an outsider I suspect that it's probably not a good thing, or at least not as good as not being on the watch list.
I do know, though, that if you're the treasurer it's not a sign of competence to not know whether you're on the watch list or not.
Is this the level of competence Wendy Wilton plans to bring to the State Treasurer's office?
It’s no secret that Beth Pearce is a numbers person and not a career politician; something I respect her more for actually. I listened to that debate yesterday and was a little frightened by Ms. Wilton’s superior tone and attitude. Me thinks that Beth is actually doing such a good job, Ms. Wilton is frustrated by that reality and angry about the writing on the wall. At least Ms. Wilton will be able to return to Rutland to provide that dedicated service she continually talks about. Here’s to Rutland coming off the watch list.
There seems to be several things Wendy Wilton does not know. She claims that she turned a $5M deficit into a $3.8M surplus, but she does not seem to know what her own audit reports detail. From the Rutland City website:
June 30, 2008 Audit Report, page 13, Undesignated Fund Balance (Surplus) $1,938,194.
June 30, 2009 Audit Report, page 15, Undesignated Fund Balance $2,593,498.
June 30, 2010 Audit Report, page 15, Undesignaated Fund Balance $3,322,523.
June 30, 2011 Audit Report, page 15, Unassigned Fund Balance $2,794,074.
The FY ’12 Audit Report is not yet posted on the Rutland website, but the Treasurer’s Preliminary Financial Report is and it states on page 7, Unassigned Fund Balance $2,628,728.
Clearly there never was a deficit of $5M. To claim there was is simply not true.
“Where in the World Was Wendy Wilton?”
put down the glass pipe during work hours Wendy? You deserve no less than five pinnochios & a pants on fire award. Some aloe should clear up that redness after a while. Hopefully Rutland will finally wake up.