Well, at least the LAIC is trying... sort of.
Last week I reported that the Lake Area Improvement Corporation, the super-secret cabal of Madison leaders paying a Brookings resident over $100,000 a year to pretend to do economic development, has been violating state law with its failure to submit annual financial reports to Lake County.
This week, the LAIC makes a weak attempt to satisfy SDCL 7-18-12 by tacking the following piece of paper to the laughable letter it sent the county in June requesting a $30,000 handout from taxpayers:
Memo to LAIC: the relevant statute calls for "an annual report of all receipts and expenditures." I don't see any itemized receipts or expenditures on this "report." I suggest that now, made fully aware of statute, the LAIC continues to flout it. Paging Attorney General Jackley....
To the extent we can discern anything specific about the LAIC's operations, we see that "admin/general" eats up over 30% of expenditures. 30% overhead: not exactly an efficient operation. (Memo to LAIC #2: I can cut your overhead by 15% right away: hire me, and I'll do Dwaine Chapel's job for $70,000 a year.)
Compare these numbers to the figures the LAIC submitted to the Madison City Commission in its request for $240,000 from city taxpayers:
The only apparent similarity between these two sets of numbers is the citation of $165,000 in taxpayer subsidy. I welcome the accountants among my readers to try to square these differing accounts.
Pending clarification, I interpret these two documents as a continuation of the Lake Area Improvement Corporation's standard operating procedure: throw meaningless numbers on paper, share no details, and hope no one notices.
WOW... the LAIC filed the report almost immediately after Cory exposed them. Why did it take so many years for this report to be filed?
Sure it is filed now, but where is the proper accounting? I, like Cory, do not believe this report meets the legal requirements.
What is the LAIC covering up? Why are the numbers out of sync between the reports?
City and County commissioners better pay close attention to this issue. I have a feeling this will be one of the main issues in the next campaign. I would expect commisioners to call back Mr. Chapel and the LAIC and ask some tough questions before giving them any funding this year.
Millions of dollars in taxpayer money spent in the last 10 years and this is what we get in return: fuzzy math and closed back-room meetings.
Someone is benefiting greatly from all this money. Show the public the real numbers LAIC! We deserve to know where the tax money is going!
This "balance sheet" would get anyone fired in any corporation in America. Contributions from whom? Sales of what? What, specifically, are the liabilities and assets? How much did they spend on stamps? When I was circuit administrator, we had a breakdown to the very penny of every receipt and expenditure for every courthouse in the district. When I was administrator of the Madison Area Arts Council (centuries ago), we had a breakdown of every penny we received and spent. This piece of paper from LAIC is simply ridiculous.
Wow.....sloppy bookkeeping like that and you want us to simply hand over how much money??? I completely agree with Eve, we as taxpayers not only have a right to know, but deservere to know where EVERY single penny of OUR hard earned money is going.
It is hard to believe that the LAIC Board of Directors is accepting of this kind of performance. I know and respect many of the individuals on the Board of Directors. I hope that they will push to have more influence over this "Corporation" and will work to achieve a higher standard of accountability.
If you went to a bank with a 3-page proposal and asked for a quarter million dollars of funding, they would laugh and probably escort you from their property. How is this acceptable when asking for taxpayer funding?
If Mr. Chapel is basically a salesman for bringing jobs to town, how about the LAIC pays him on a commission basis instead? If the SD State Labor Department shows increases in job growth for Lake County and the SD State Revenue Department shows sales tax growth for Madison, Mr. Chapel will get his commission payments. Incentive based pay can be a great motivator to get things done.
The business leaders on the LAIC Board of Directors need to stand up and hold Mr. Chapel accountable for his performance. So far, there is poor public relations, bad accounting, and a lack of job growth and sales tax revenue growth.
Pay on commission... performance pay! Officer thinking, Ashley. I should mention that I'll take the LAIC exec job for $70K a year as base and accept performance-based bonuses and penalties. For instance, on employment, calculate the proportional number of jobs that Madison would have gained or lost for the year if it kept pace with the statewide change in job totals. I'll take a $100 penalty for every job below that number that Madison loses in a year. I'll take a $100 bonus for every Madison job above that number. (I'll take no bonus for potential jobs.) That would be a pretty strong motivation to bring in every new job I could, even if I did it two or three at a time with loans to new small businesses on Main Street... the way Ord, Nebraska, does. (See, I'm already doing Dwaine's job, identifying viable local economic development options.)
If Delon Mork ever decides to retire, he would be the BEST salesman ever for Madison and would be an ideal LAIC Executive Director. Then watch us grow!
I would be thrilled to compete with DeLon for that job. He would be awesome! Rod, he'd get you three call centers by the end of his first year... and they'd all buy lots of Blizzards!
Cory,
If you're interested, http://www.guidestar.org is a wonderful tool for looking at non-profits. LAIC's 990s (tax documents) are on there. A little sifting can give you more details, though an audit / accounting report would be more helpful for understanding operations.
The board doesn't receive compensation, but the reported time spent is abysmally low... so there's probably only rubber stamp oversight...