Tag: Financial Guarantees

Consensus of Opinion: Time to replace Jackson County’s five supervisors

Retirees Protesting outside Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula May 29, 2015. Photo courtesy of SHRS Hopes Group on Facebook
Retirees Protesting outside Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula May 29, 2015. Photo courtesy of SHRS Hopes Group on Facebook

Singing River Health System retirees for some time now have been papering Jackson County with fliers with a simple message: Please help us clean house on August 4th.

We couldn’t agree more. The Jackson County supervisors must go. All five of them.

For months, they have been negligent when it comes to SRHS. At best, they didn’t know what was going on as the SRHS pension fund evaporated and hospital finances withered. And they may have known more than they’re letting on. Either way, they’ve worn out their welcome. Continue Reading…….

Private or Public? Building a Fiction ~ SRHS Watch Continue reading “Consensus of Opinion: Time to replace Jackson County’s five supervisors”

An accounting thought…..

So here I am today folks periodically reading bond indentures, a very old SHRS audit report from back in the days when things were still groovy financially as well as Jackson County’s audits. First off I am not so pleased to report I have only found about half of SHRS’ debt on EMMA and there is a message there about Jackson County not being current on their 2014 submissions. The other half of the $100 million dollars in debt is as of this point still a mystery to me.

My point is not to tantalize with the fact I have been doing copious amounts of due diligence on this subject but to make a point to the fairly large contingent of the finance and accounting community that reads this project. Neither Jackson nor Forrest Counties include their component units in with the primary government for financial reporting purposes and both get adverse opinions on the discretely presented component units presented in the annual audits along with unqualified opinions on the primary governments. To the extent it is clear the county owned hospitals are magnitudes larger financial critters than their primary governments (which omit them from their consolidated financials) and Jackson County taxpayers are potentially on the hook for a financial guarantee of over $100 million dollars related to the omitted financials, how in the heck can the primary government not be disclaimed due to the sheer materiality of the omission by failing to consolidate the Primary government and component units. SHRS had audits performed that would allow for consolidation, it appears the case here is that Jackson County simply refused to consolidate its financials to include the Hospital.

My point is had Jackson County properly presented its financial statements and consolidated County Government and its component unit at the Hospital, management at the Hospital would not have been able to conceal their financial problems for as long as they did.

As for Jackson County’s financial statements, file them under materially misleading as the financial guarantee of the bonds is presented, just not any information that would allow the end user to figure the risk of the contingent financial guarantee of the SHRS bonds from turning into a 5 mil property tax assessment borne by the taxpayer to pay for bad decisions that were made in secret.

I’ll have more a bit later.

Latest boondoggle proposed by Phil Bryant and the Mississippi Development Authority: Jackson Movie Studio

God help everyone hold onto their wallets because the Movie Industry is targeting the Mississippi treasury after successfully looting Louisiana’s with taxpayer funded boondoggle. Geoff Pender promotes the scheme for the Clarion Ledger:

Adam Rosenfelt, a film producer and president of Element Pictures with more than 15 feature films to his credit, including “Mr. Brooks” and “Waiting,” wants to create Mississippix Studios, based in Jackson.

And, he wants to create a new program of film incentives that would result in more money coming in to the state, and permanent jobs. Typically film productions are granted tax breaks or other incentives upfront, shoot for a few months then head back to Hollywood with states often seeing little direct financial benefit. Rosenfelt is proposing the state create a loan guarantee program that serves as a “backstop.” If his company is successful, the state pays nothing, and instead gets 10 percent of his profit.

One big clue the latest scheme is gonna be a problem is the guy in Jackson promoting it is:

  1. Spreading a BS story about how much he loves the Mississippi coast which is why he’s been 3 and a half hours away in Jacktown for the past year with his nose up Phil Bryant’s hiney. Bryant, never known for private sector financial acumen was likely sucked right in by the promise of getting to hob nob with Slabbed favorite Bull Durham, who was last seen celebrating his successful shakedown of BP back during the oil spill.
  2. Was a “pioneer in state film incentives, and helped develop Louisiana’s groundbreaking motion picture tax credit program.” This program was groundbreaking in the sheer amount of taxpayer money that has been pissed away into the pockets of people like Rosenfelt, who now splits his time between Los Angeles and Jackson.

In fact pioneering the latest movie industry scheme to fleece the taxpayers is exactly what Rosenfelt is doing in Mississippi because he’d no more live in Jackson, Mississippi than he would Montgomery Alabama if the taxpayers weren’t gonna pay for it some sort of way. Louisiana pissed away over one bllion dollars before people started to ask the critical questions that had not been previously asked about Rosenfelt’s Louisiana film tax credit boondoggle according the Louisiana Budget Project (PDF of their 12 page report can be found here).

One would naturally think that after the financial crash just 5 years ago the problems with Rosenfelt’s scheme would be apparent, especially to Lt. Gov Tate Reeves, who comes from a financial background.  Here are Rosenfelt’s talking points: Continue reading “Latest boondoggle proposed by Phil Bryant and the Mississippi Development Authority: Jackson Movie Studio”