Sen. Marc Dann returns the favor to former STRS board member Betty (Montgomery) -- and then some!
From Sen. Marc Dann's blog: http://www.blogforohio.com/
Friday, July 07, 2006 A couple of weeks ago, in an interview with Ohio Public Radio, Betty Montgomery invited me to “take off the gloves” in our race for Attorney General if that’s what I thought I needed to do.
Frankly, I haven’t had time to swing at Betty for her many shortcomings as AG and Auditor because I’ve been too busy attempting to force her and her Republican buddies to tell the truth about why the BWC’s chief financial officer Terry Gasper, who, at the time was taking bribes from Tom Noe and other investment managers, was appointed to the board of the newly formed Venture Capital Authority in November of 2003.
No one seems to have an answer—at least one they want to make public. Nor do they want to tell us why Gasper remained on the VCA board for nearly a year after he was forced to resign from the BWC for losing a couple of hundred million taxpayer dollars.
Undeterred by my refusal to take a swipe at her, Betty came out swinging herself yesterday, backed up by her cornerman, perpetually truth-challenged Ohio GOP chair Bob Bennett. In a press release issued from deep within the bowels of the Party, they called me a hypocrite for criticizing Gasper’s appointment even though I voted in favor of it when it came before the Senate.
So, let me get this straight, I’m a hypocrite for voting for an appointment that was made by Governor Taft, supported by the GOP leadership, and rammed through the, yes, Republican-controlled Senate?
An appointment that was made and supported by Bennett’s Republicans because, I and the other members of the Senate were told, Gasper was doing an outstanding job investing the BWC’s money?
I don’t think so.
You see, the truth is I’m not a hypocrite—I was lied to by the Republicans, as were the other members of the legislature and the people of Ohio.
And if Betty Montgomery had done her job as auditor we all would have known about Gasper's failures and BWC corruption.
The truth is, as we’ve come to learn over the past year, things weren’t fine at the BWC as we were told repeatedly—unless you were Tom Noe or one of the other investment managers who were given tens of millions of your tax dollars to invest simply because they had made contributions to any one of a number of Republicans, including Betty Montgomery.
It’s also the truth that Bob Bennett has never let the truth stand in the way of his desperate attempts to defend what may be the most corrupt and incompetent band of officeholders and appointees in the history of the state.
Along with calling me a hypocrite because I was victimized by some of the most facile prevaricators in the land, Betty also said in the press release, as she did in the aforementioned radio interview, that I don’t quite understand the duties of her office.
It seems that Betty is upset with me for asking why she ignored a 2004 BWC audit that raised questions about investment practices at the Bureau—an audit that landed on her desk nearly one year before reports surfaced about her longtime friend and contributor Tom Noe, “Coingate” and the other investment scams. According to Betty, and this is a direct quote from her radio interview, “We don’t do the audit, we’ve never done the audit. He (that would be me) can blame me, but he should really figure out how government works.”
Yesterday, her campaign spokesman said “Betty Montgomery found out about the problems with the BWC the same time everyone else did.” He also noted that the audit was handled by an outside agency and not the state auditor’s office, then said “Mr. Dann needs a dose of reality therapy.”
Well, here’s the reality: if Betty had done her job we all would have known about Mr. Gasper long before he was appointed, the appointment never would have been made, I and the other members of the Senate who were misled about Mr. Gasper’s qualifications would not have voted for him, and millions of dollars would have been saved.
And here’s some more reality straight from the Ohio Revised Code—which Betty has either never read, doesn’t understand, or has consistently ignored.
First, here are the duties of the Auditor as defined in ORC 117.10:
The auditor of state shall audit all public offices as provided in this chapter. The auditor of state also may audit the accounts of private institutions, associations, boards, and corporations receiving public money for their use and may require of them annual reports in such form as the auditor of state prescribes.
In other words, it’s her job to look at the books of state agencies like the BWC. And although the law also gives her the authority to appoint outside firms to perform these audits when necessary, it also gives her the following responsibilities as defined in ORC 117.24, which is titled “Analysis of report”:
The auditor of state shall analyze the report of the public accountant who has audited a public office to determine whether any public money has been illegally expended, any public money collected has not been accounted for, any public money due has not been collected, or any public property has been converted or misappropriated. In addition, the auditor of state or his appointee shall determine whether there has been any malfeasance or gross neglect of duty on the part of any officer or employee of the public office.
In plain English, this means that once an outside firm completes an audit, like the one done in 2004 of BWC, she is supposed to at least open it, read the executive summary and see if something is wrong before she signs it, something she freely admits she didn’t do in this case.
Why would she admit that she failed to do her job? That’s an easy one: She figures that’s better than admitting she was asleep at the switch while her good buddy Noe was looting the state treasury.
Now, here is my final question for the day, and it’s one I’ll continue to ask for the duration of the campaign:
Do the people of Ohio really want an Attorney General who doesn’t know the law, doesn’t do her job, and then makes excuses for it rather than taking responsibility for her mistakes?
I don’t think Betty or her buddy Bennett or her campaign mouthpiece will be providing an answer any time soon, but I’m confident the voters will have a resounding response on November 7.
Betty Montgomery Could have been the Hero; All her False Accusation Won't Change that
Frankly, I haven’t had time to swing at Betty for her many shortcomings as AG and Auditor because I’ve been too busy attempting to force her and her Republican buddies to tell the truth about why the BWC’s chief financial officer Terry Gasper, who, at the time was taking bribes from Tom Noe and other investment managers, was appointed to the board of the newly formed Venture Capital Authority in November of 2003.
No one seems to have an answer—at least one they want to make public. Nor do they want to tell us why Gasper remained on the VCA board for nearly a year after he was forced to resign from the BWC for losing a couple of hundred million taxpayer dollars.
Undeterred by my refusal to take a swipe at her, Betty came out swinging herself yesterday, backed up by her cornerman, perpetually truth-challenged Ohio GOP chair Bob Bennett. In a press release issued from deep within the bowels of the Party, they called me a hypocrite for criticizing Gasper’s appointment even though I voted in favor of it when it came before the Senate.
So, let me get this straight, I’m a hypocrite for voting for an appointment that was made by Governor Taft, supported by the GOP leadership, and rammed through the, yes, Republican-controlled Senate?
An appointment that was made and supported by Bennett’s Republicans because, I and the other members of the Senate were told, Gasper was doing an outstanding job investing the BWC’s money?
I don’t think so.
You see, the truth is I’m not a hypocrite—I was lied to by the Republicans, as were the other members of the legislature and the people of Ohio.
And if Betty Montgomery had done her job as auditor we all would have known about Gasper's failures and BWC corruption.
The truth is, as we’ve come to learn over the past year, things weren’t fine at the BWC as we were told repeatedly—unless you were Tom Noe or one of the other investment managers who were given tens of millions of your tax dollars to invest simply because they had made contributions to any one of a number of Republicans, including Betty Montgomery.
It’s also the truth that Bob Bennett has never let the truth stand in the way of his desperate attempts to defend what may be the most corrupt and incompetent band of officeholders and appointees in the history of the state.
Along with calling me a hypocrite because I was victimized by some of the most facile prevaricators in the land, Betty also said in the press release, as she did in the aforementioned radio interview, that I don’t quite understand the duties of her office.
It seems that Betty is upset with me for asking why she ignored a 2004 BWC audit that raised questions about investment practices at the Bureau—an audit that landed on her desk nearly one year before reports surfaced about her longtime friend and contributor Tom Noe, “Coingate” and the other investment scams. According to Betty, and this is a direct quote from her radio interview, “We don’t do the audit, we’ve never done the audit. He (that would be me) can blame me, but he should really figure out how government works.”
Yesterday, her campaign spokesman said “Betty Montgomery found out about the problems with the BWC the same time everyone else did.” He also noted that the audit was handled by an outside agency and not the state auditor’s office, then said “Mr. Dann needs a dose of reality therapy.”
Well, here’s the reality: if Betty had done her job we all would have known about Mr. Gasper long before he was appointed, the appointment never would have been made, I and the other members of the Senate who were misled about Mr. Gasper’s qualifications would not have voted for him, and millions of dollars would have been saved.
And here’s some more reality straight from the Ohio Revised Code—which Betty has either never read, doesn’t understand, or has consistently ignored.
First, here are the duties of the Auditor as defined in ORC 117.10:
The auditor of state shall audit all public offices as provided in this chapter. The auditor of state also may audit the accounts of private institutions, associations, boards, and corporations receiving public money for their use and may require of them annual reports in such form as the auditor of state prescribes.
In other words, it’s her job to look at the books of state agencies like the BWC. And although the law also gives her the authority to appoint outside firms to perform these audits when necessary, it also gives her the following responsibilities as defined in ORC 117.24, which is titled “Analysis of report”:
The auditor of state shall analyze the report of the public accountant who has audited a public office to determine whether any public money has been illegally expended, any public money collected has not been accounted for, any public money due has not been collected, or any public property has been converted or misappropriated. In addition, the auditor of state or his appointee shall determine whether there has been any malfeasance or gross neglect of duty on the part of any officer or employee of the public office.
In plain English, this means that once an outside firm completes an audit, like the one done in 2004 of BWC, she is supposed to at least open it, read the executive summary and see if something is wrong before she signs it, something she freely admits she didn’t do in this case.
Why would she admit that she failed to do her job? That’s an easy one: She figures that’s better than admitting she was asleep at the switch while her good buddy Noe was looting the state treasury.
Now, here is my final question for the day, and it’s one I’ll continue to ask for the duration of the campaign:
Do the people of Ohio really want an Attorney General who doesn’t know the law, doesn’t do her job, and then makes excuses for it rather than taking responsibility for her mistakes?
I don’t think Betty or her buddy Bennett or her campaign mouthpiece will be providing an answer any time soon, but I’m confident the voters will have a resounding response on November 7.
posted by Kathie Bracy at 11:41 PM
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