The program, which ran from 2001 until the county stopped it in March, cost more than $900,000, including the salaries paid to employees while they were taking classes.
Actually, the figures are about half that:
The salaries paid out to participating employees strictly for time spent in school is $338,413.19. That is $462,975.68 less than the originally reported $801,413.19 figure. Other expenses too, like those applied to training, travel, and tuition, are reduced from $189,744.97 to $171,023.62 when only those expenses directly related to the MSW program were tallied.
The affect of these revised numbers provided by HHS, is to reduce the overall cost of the program from just under $1 million to $509,461.13.
When an employee is working at their job, money they earn cannot be considered part of the MSW program. The Pioneer Press makes the error, and they are not the first, that all salary to county employees should count, even time spent not involved in the program.Error #2:
...after completing the program, they were obligated to stay with the child welfare division for a period equal to the time during which they received the federal money. If they left, they had to pay back the money spent on the program, county officials said.
There was no stipulation that employees must stay in county employ. In fact, they were free to quit the county as long as they worked for a private company in the child welfare field. This was part of the problem. After an employee left the county, there was no way to insure they were fulfilling their end of the contract.
Error #3:
Chisago County has since repaid the federal government and provided all requested documentation.
The county has provided the documentation, but to my knowledge has not paid the feds back in full...yet.
Error #4:
"This is a big embarrassment for Chisago County," said Chisago County Commissioner Ben Montzka, who tried unsuccessfully to suspend the program more than a year ago. "It's an example of how you don't want to account for public funds."
This isn't really an error of the paper, but more an error of the commissioner. Indeed, he did try to suspend the program, but the county administrator beat him to it. Ironically, when that fact became public, the administrator was taken to task anyway:
Montzka asked Moosey when he had suspended the program and at the same time suggested that Moosey had overstepped by suspending the program without board approval.
Being as close to this situation as I am, the Pioneer Press article reeks of a very one sided perspective; that of a specific county commissioner with an agenda other than public scrutiny of a bungled program. None of what the PiPress reported is new but is instead rehashed information, and as we have shown, much of it bogus.
You won't find a bigger critic of the program than me. The $63,000 figure is a shadow of the money the county lost through a lack of oversight. But where the county has failed, in my opinion, is in its lack of enthusiasm for going after employees, one in particular, who took advantage of the program and the loose contract, to score a Masters degree on the taxpayers dime.
To the county's credit, they are addressing the problem through increased oversight.
The PiPress headline is "Chisago County / State will audit county books," and this is the final error. The state audits the county's books every year. What will occur is two years of added scrutiny in the specific area of the use of federal funds, nothing more.
The question I have is: Why does someone run to the Pioneer Press to cover a story that has been done like dinner going back to late 2005? It certainly wasn't because local media failed to cover it.
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