LETTER: Vote for Gianforte for fiscal responsibility

The scandal of $1.1 billion improperly accounted for is enough to tilt my vote for Greg Gianforte and against incumbent Steve Bullock.

Greg Gianforte with his history of successful business management (note: RightNow Technologies in Bozeman, employed over 1,000 people in 2011 when it was sold to Oracle) and his independence from special interests, and the fact that he is only beholden to the general and varied interests of every Montanan, deserves your vote!

See the gory details of laxity and mismanagement in the office of Gov. Steve Bullock (who should truly govern, right?) by researching it yourself, but here is the summary.

Bullock called it the situation “completely unacceptable” only AFTER it was revealed by the Legislative Audit Division.

Apparently, appropriate accounting controls have not been in place … and it seems to be an endemic problem.

And the Department of Administration has had 100 percent turnover, from the administrator to the state accountant to the accountant in the last 24 months, from June 2013 to June 2015. (Montana Public Radio, mtpr.org website, June 24, 2015)

“125 errors and lack of internal controls. Sadly, those controls, had they been in place, according to the audit division, could have caught these problems earlier. In other words, there weren’t even controls in place to catch problems.” (Billings Gazette, July 3, 2015)

Cindy Jorgenson from the Legislative Audit Division said …, “We communicated over 125 significant items.” … “Many of those amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars in error. The audit team caught them, not the agency’s control system, and for that reason we classified this as a material weakness.” (Montana Public Radio, mtpr.org website, June 24, 2015)

State budget liabilities were underestimated or overestimated by a factor of 10. Montana Budget Director Dan Villa told the committee that in a few cases zeroes had been left off figures. (Billings Gazette, July 3, 2015)

Wow! Math 101 remediation seems necessary!

Example: “…estimate of the state’s liability for infrastructure needs, the [Montana State Financial] report pegged the amount as $1.2 billion, but [Legislative] auditors revised downward to just over $200 million, a billion dollar mistake.” This was a $1 billion overstatement of accumulated depreciation.  (Montana Public Radio, mtpr.org website, June 24, 2015) —Mark Rice, Kalispell