Help Wanted
So, the city’s hiring a bean counter to handle the 2015 upcoming budget. Acc’d’g to today’s Herald Times [paywall], Mayor Mark Kruzan et al have tabbed the Crowe Horvath accounting firm to slap a quick dough doc together in time for the City Council to review it in August.
Just to bring you abreast of the situ., City Controller Sue West took a powder in June after only a year and and half on the job. The Mayor characterized her leaving as a “life decision.” He said at the time that her absence wouldn’t affect the ongoing budget process because Deputy Controller Donna Slater, a CPA, was on hand and, per the M., “she doesn’t have that much less experience with budget preparation. We’re very fortunate to have Donna.”
Slater less than a week later threw her hands in the air and resigned as well. Eek.
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Now Crowe Horvath senior manager Angie Steeno will draw up the draft budget. Slater (who’s staying on the job through Aug.) and city staffers already have been hard at work on it but the remaining work entails more than just dotting the i‘s. Crowe Horvath is a well-respected accounting firm with offices in 26 cities around the country. The outfit was started in 1942 by biz math geeks Fred P. Crowe Sr. and Cletus F. Chizek. By 1995, Crowe’d become one of the top 10 accounting firms, in terms of billing, in the US. After the usual series of mergers and buyouts, Crowe Chizek became Crowe Horvath in 2008.
Steeno has previous experience with Bloomington: she handled some capital development issues for the Utilities Dept. back in 2011.
I dunno if it’s me, but ever since I arrived in this town in 2009, people entrusted with both the city and county’s cash have been dropping like flies. After learning about Amy Gertstein and Rhonda Foster’s alleged misuse of county credit cards and Justin Wykoff allegedly cutting himself sweetheart deals with Public Works contractors, I get the feeling local governmental finances are no more safe than if all B-town and Monroe County cash was simply parked on shelves in some photocopier room.
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What with the potential for criminal charges, firings, and unexpected resignations, landing a job as a local pecuniary official might not be cause for celebration of late.
The mayor and the County Council promise us things are getting better. We’ll see.
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Tyson Talks Tough
So, I’ve been saying this for years but who wants to listen to me? Tons o’folks listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson, though, especially those usually on my side of the fence who believe in climate science and evolution etc. Mother Jones has published a vid wherein the King of All Science tells the anti-GMO crowd, essentially, to take a Xanax. He explains:
I’m amazed how much rejection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public. It smacks of the fear factor that exists at every new, emergent science…. What most people don’t know — and they should — is that practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food. There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There’s no wild cows…. You list all the fruit, and all the vegetables, and ask yourself, is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it’s not as large, it’s not as sweet, it’s not as juicy, and it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals, that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called artificial selection. That’s how we genetically modify things. So now we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden you’re gonna complain? …We are creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs. I don’t have a problem with that because we’ve been doing that for tens of thousands of years. So chill out.
Fallen Idol?
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Sorry, NdGT, there won’t be any chillin‘; the foodies who’ve seen this vid are having nervous breakdowns at this very moment trying to figure out what to think about you now.
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Cuban Wisdom
Indiana University alum and billionaire Mark Cuban doesn’t like the way corporations are trying to get out of paying US taxes now. Big outfits like Walgreen’s are moving their HQs to foreign countries these days so’s they can dodge their responsibilities to help keep this holy land running. Cuban sez:
If I own stock in your company and you move offshore for tax reasons, I’m selling your stock.
When companies move offshore to save on taxes, you and I make up the tax shortfall elsewhere.
Looks like he learned a thing or two at the Kelley School.
Cuban
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