AUDIO: Will Marco’s audit be made in the shade?

MARCO ISLAND — Being made in the shade isn’t necessarily a good thing when it comes to Florida government. So why would a Marco Island committee and city councilors support avoiding meetings held in the Sunshine?

Members of the city’s forensic audit committee and auditors from the firm James Moore have maintained they intend to keep audit information off the record until the conclusion of their audit of the estimated $40 million Collier Boulevard reconstruction project. They say this is to protect city employees.

Keeping ongoing audit information off public record until the completion of the audit is permissible by Florida law. However holding meetings outside the “Sunshine,” which means away from the public, isn’t consistent with the statutes.

The question now is: Is the city’s Ad Hoc Forensic Audit Committee circumventing the spirit of the Sunshine Law by planning to meet one-on-one with City Councilors and auditors during the forensic audit of the Collier Boulevard reconstruction project, which spanned 2002 through 2008?

Forensic audit committee chairwoman Terri DiSciullo says “no.”

“The committee and I are not violating the Sunshine Law. The Sunshine Law does not prohibit us from having individual meetings with auditors or City Councilors, and the committee is committed to making the forensic audit process and findings open to the public at the proper time,” DiSciullo wrote in an e-mail to the reporter Tuesday.

James Moore was to have the audit complete and ready for public presentation by June 15.

Per reports at the April 7 audit committee meeting, auditors were on-schedule.

However, at the April 27 meeting, the Ad Hoc Forensic Audit Committee, chaired by the former city councilor, DiSciullo, decided unanimously (7-0) to delay that public presentation so auditors may meet one-on-one with committee members.

Committee members are then to meet one-on-one with the councilor who appointed them. Auditors will also meet one-on-one with councilors. Feedback will be channeled from the auditor back to DiSciullo and then presented to the public. At least that’s the current plan, per audio recordings of the April 27 audit meeting.

“I think that’s problematic. At what point is there a public discussion here? The whole point of government in the sunshine is to offer public oversight and participation,” said Adria Harper, director of the First Amendment Foundation, which is based in Tallahassee and supports members of the press with government right-to-know issues.

“It’s an obvious attempt to avoid public discussion and even a public record,” Harper continued.

She added that there are many public record exemptions, including not making on-going audit reports available to the public before audit completion. However there are not many Sunshine Law exemptions.

Councilman Ted Forcht said he was not comfortable with the process decided by the committee.

“I know more about what is going on with the bicycle path committee than the most important project going on right now in the city, which is this audit. This is a committee about being open and honest that isn’t being open and honest,” Forcht said.

On the other hand, Forcht said he wasn’t concerned and wouldn’t question whether DiSciullo would withhold information to protect anyone.

“If it were anyone but Terri DiSciullo, I would be questioning it, but she’s the most honest person I’ve met in my life,” Forcht said.

Nonetheless, he said he doesn’t like the idea of closed meetings.

“In Florida, you just cannot have a shadow of a doubt about what is going on in the government. There is no shade in a public official’s life,” Forcht said.

He added that his opinion of the planned one-on-one meetings is that they are a breach of the Sunshine Law.

If Michael Sibley, a senior manager with James Moore & Co., does as planned in the April 27 committee meeting and reports back to DiSciullo on the questions and comments of city councilors and committee members, than Sibley may be acting improperly as a liaison between committee members, who by law may not meet or share ideas on committee business outside of a meeting which was announced in advanced and open to public attendance and input.

DiSciullo was a member of the council during the Collier Boulevard project, which is being audited. She has also been a supporter of former interim City Manager Dana Souza, who resigned in the fall of 2008 following his “transition report,” which outlined his concerns about the finance department, going public. The report also led to the “retirement” of former Finance Director Bill Harrison, who DiSciullo and other committee members have said should not be allowed in City Hall while the audit is ongoing.

Committee members including DiSciullo, Larry Magel and Bill Sneddon have all said they support holding closed meetings to protect employees from premature allegations.

Committee members also stated in early committee meetings that they wanted the record to show that they were uncomfortable with Harrison, who was consulting with the city after his “retirement” as finance director, due to his possibly being the reason for Souza’s concerns about financial wrong doing in the city.

Harrison retired suddenly in October 2008 seemingly based on political pressures arising from Souza’s questions about the financial practices during the Collier Boulevard project, as well as other financial concerns.

City Manager Steve Thompson had said he saw no evidence of wrongdoing by Harrison, but the political environment made it unduly difficult for Harrison to continue doing his job.

Councilman Chuck Kiester had said Harrison was “cooking the books” and members of the audit committee have been affirming the possibility while Harrison continued working for the city as a consultant.

Sibley said Harrison has not yet been interviewed by the auditors, as of April 27.

After noting there were no members of the press at the April 27 meeting, DiSciullo presented an idea.

“How do I know if one of the six of you (committee members) have concerns? Can you express your concerns to Mike (Sibley) and Mike says without naming names, others have concerns with x, y and z. Then maybe he comes to me and says ‘Should I go forward with any of these things?”

As Harper pointed out, it seems like a lot of work compared to holding an open meeting.

And as the press soon found out by reviewing the audio tapes of all the audit meetings, Magel told DiSciullo the idea sounded like a Sunshine Law violation.

“He (Sibley) can’t be a vehicle to communicate from me to you,” Magel pointed out.

“(Former City Manger) Bill Moss used to do that with me. He wouldn’t tell me which council members they were. He would say I know some of your council members are concerned with this, this and this,” DiSciullo responded.

When DiSciullo completed sharing her idea for how information would be communicated between them, committee member Amadeo Petricca responded.

“I’m concerned with you putting this out into the public record,” Petricca said.

Petricca said he was not concerned with keeping information off the record and away from the press, but keeping the intent of doing so might “raise an eyebrow,” he said.

Petricca declined to comment since the meeting.

If violations occur, a judge would hold committee members and councilors responsible.

“It wouldn’t be the auditor held accountable. It would be the committee members, the council members, it’s their responsibility,” Harper said.

DiSciullo maintains the committee’s reasoning for private meetings is to protect current and former city employees’ private and professional lives.

Also DiSciullo said it would allow councilors to ask questions more candidly of things they didn’t understand so they could avoid looking stupid in public.

So how will the public catch up and understand the audit results after council and the committee is done meeting in private this June?

The committee was selected by the council as a vehicle to inform the public, which is just what the committee plans to do, DiSciullo maintains. That presentation is now expected August 3, per the April 27 meeting.

As for the proposal to delay presenting the audit results from June 15 until as far away as September, City Council will decide whether to approve the request at the City Council meeting 5:30 p.m., May 18, at 51 Bald Eagle Drive.

While e-mail correspondence between City Clerk Laura Litzan and DiSciullo indicated the reason for the audit report’s delay would be “volume of materials,” other reasons have been voiced in the meeting and in correspondence between DiSciullo and auditors. The scope of the audit has not changed.

“When this gets communicated, do you think it will sound better if it’s additional time to communicate our results with the audit committee and council? I know this is sensitive and just want to make sure its communicated without causing a lot of issues,” Sibley wrote to DiSciullo on April 29.

“I know you wanted us to get out in front of this, Larry” DiSciullo said to Magel at the April 7 meeting regarding press coverage.

“Nothing will get out there unless she (Berndatte Britz-Parker of James Moore) is the one to put it out there. That’s all I want to address in the minutes, Larry,” DiSciullo said.

Committee member Ron Saffin said he didn’t care to talk to an auditor one-on-one. Saffin did not return phone calls from the reporter to clarify why he made that statement in a meeting.

DiSciullo has said she wanted to put allegations against two staff members in the public record during the course of the audit committee meetings. One name under suspicion by the committee, Harrison, made the record; the other, was decided to be unnecessary by the majority of the committee.

Harper said the reason for the Sunshine Laws is to allow the public to be involved in the process of the “what and why?” of a topic and holding private meetings so committee members and councilors are privy to information the public is not privy to hinders this process.

City Manager Steve Thompson said he was not involved in the audit process or committee other than to oversee that staff pull documents needed by auditors. Auditors have said staff cooperation and assistance has been great.

“Typically the audit firm performs the audit and reports back to the committee as a whole,” Thompson said of his knowledge and experience of the usual audit process. He said the committee’s choice to handle it differently is what they likely felt was best.

Vice Chairman Frank Recker, who has typically been in support of open, transparent government, said he saw no reason for concern in the private meetings planned.

He said he did not believe the meetings were to be the conclusion of the audit, but rather an update mid-way.

When asked if DiSciullo were responsible for gathering and disseminating committee and council feedback and if that allowed for something too sensitive about a current or former employee to be withheld from the public, DiSciullo responded “I won’t let that happen.”

“I don’t want the community to think they won’t have the information to understand why we went from $1 million over budget to $2 million under budget or that we’re trying to hide anything. We want everyone to understand where we’ve been and where we need to go,” DiSciullo said.

Sneddon said he agreed with DiSciullo.

“It’s government and leadership at it’s best. The public can be confident they will be getting all the information,” Sneddon said.