Tag: Jackson County

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.

The best kind of problem to have – one with a solution

Hurricane Katrina destroyed an estimated 60-70,000 homes along the Mississippi Gulf Coast -taking so much from us but depositing one Marianne Custo on our shore to attend the Mississippi Renewal Forum in October 2005.

Marianne Cusato stands about 5-foot-nothin’ with a headful of shoulder-length black curls that won’t stay in place when she talks. She has the nervous energy symptomatic of youth, raw talent, and unleashed want-to. Miss Marianne claims to be 31, but she’d be hard-pressed to buy liquor without an ID.

A Manhattan-based architect from Anchorage, Alaska, by way of South Bend (Go Irish!), Ms. Cusato talks so fast a Southerner needs subtitles. Say again? Pardon? She’s kind enough to repeat herself.

Repeatedly. In fact, she just did, telling us once more that we can’t call her an architect yet; officially, she’s a designer. Okay. Yes ma’am. She’s also got visual aids. That helps. She’s holding up designs for something she calls the Katrina Cottage.

Cute as the dickens. All beachy angles, peaks and front porches. Looks like something out of Adorable Coastal Living for the Incredibly Wealthy magazine. It’s not.

What the Katrina Cottage is, is an alternative to the FEMA trailer. No joke. And get this: It costs less. Where the woefully inadequate, tiny, yack-ugly, hospital-white trailer preferred by the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency runs us taxpayers about $75,000…Cusato thinks her cottage could be manufactured for about 45 grand. Or less. Plus, you can add on to it. So it’s a temporary solution with a lease for permanence.

The trick is getting all the red tape off these cottages so they can become become permanent – and folks in Jackson County are doing their best to unwrap the cottages there. Continue reading “The best kind of problem to have – one with a solution”