Winston Brooks eschews outside audit-again!

Andrea Schoellkopf reports in the Journal, link, today
that Winston Brooks has yet again refused an impartial
audit of administrative accountability in the APS.

"Brooks said APS would need to evaluate departments
and job functions, but said he did not yet want to seek
an external audit of effectiveness."

Every external audit that has ever been done of the leadership
of the APS has revealed significant administrative failures.

In a recent audit of the APS,
the Council of the Great City Schools auditors wrote;

Administrative evaluations, in the APS, are subjective
and unrelated to promotion or step placement.

When the APS was without a single CPA, on staff,
the state auditor offered the services of their auditors, and
APS declined, twice.

APS does not want state auditors looking at their (lack of)
financial record keeping.

APS needs an accountability audit.

Someone needs to come in looking for meaningful standards
of conduct and competence, and for honest accountability
to those standards.

They will find neither.

The most recent audit of the APS Finance Division, by
Meyners & Co, revealed neither standards nor accountability
in a division that spends 1.3 billion dollars annually.

The Meyners Audit revealed that the APS Finance Division has
forever been;

• without adequate written financially sound policies
• without accountability to the policies that they did have, and
• without keeping complete and accurate books.

Another audit by the CGCS revealed that anyone in the APS
who blows the whistle on any of these shenanigans will fall
victim to a "... culture of retribution and retaliation ..."

It is clear as crystal why Winston Brooks and the good ol' boys
don't want independent auditors scrutinizing their operation.

Less clear is how they are able to get away with it; and
get away with it, and
get away with it.

How can public servants in an organization wracked with
corruption and incompetence, simply refuse to be audited
in the public interest? They have shown over and over again
that trust in them is misplaced. Yet, Winston Brooks, et al
steadfastly refuse to be audited, insisting instead that
we trust them to audit themselves.

I don't, and neither should anyone else.

It is wrong for them, even to ask.