Heard that Erin, from the Glen Rose Reporter newspaper, was at the Foundation meeting yesterday morning, to which also the newly appointed Somervell County Hospital Authority board was also invited. Therefore, it will be hugely interesting to see the writeup in the Glen Rose Reporter. (I had been out of town on Monday and completely forgot about that early morning meeting). If you look at the agenda, what was going to happen looks pretty innocuous, right? But the foundation's auditor apparently presented a lengthy dissertation on the state of Glen Rose Medical Center's finances. And, apparently, at some point during the meeting, Judge Walter Maynard expressed some dissatisfaction with the state of the finances that the county is appropriating, and indicated that the root of the problem seems to be that someone had made the decision, at the foundation, to take the 14.5 million certificate of obligation monies and, instead of keeping them in a separate account, comingle them into one operating account. And, that account was dipped into to keep the hospital running, as opposed to being used strictly for improvements to the building, etc, which Somervell County has always owned. Whose fault? Maynard apparently pointed the finger at the previous auditor.

UPDATE: Feb 16, 2010- the monies being referred to are not the Certificate of Obligations monies- Walter Maynard explained that those monies are safe. Looks like these are monies that were supposed to be set aside BY GRMC as payment back FOR the COs but were instead used, at least partially, for operating expenses.

I don't understand why this would be an auditor's fault. Perhaps an accountant IF the Foundation had either not understood that they were breaking a contractual convenant by comingling the funds into one account, but even then, isn't the ultimate responsiblity for this the Foundation's? My father was an accountant and also an auditor, and it's always been my understanding that the role of the auditor is to point out the financial situation in order for those who have responsibility to make decisions.

Remember from the last county commissioner's meeting that the speaker representing the foundation indicated that the funds had been comingled? (VIDEO from the entire meeting here, audio here).  I have clipped out just that section. Note that the money that supposedly that was supposedly set aside for repayment to the county IS NOT THERE. That first payment was supposed to be somewhere around $750,000 bucks. But because the Foundation dipped into that fund that was Somervell County's to help out THEIR operating expenses... it's not there. Who pays for that? I'm guessing it is YOU AND ME.

This leads into a different question. The discussion came up during that meeting about how many audits ought to be performed. The Foundation is doing one audit but for some reason it doesn't include time past mid-September. (I clipped out just that section, will update this later after the video uploads. ) Should the Hospital Authority do a beginning audit that includes those months or do a yearly audit or what? And should they use the same auditors that the Foundation used? I personally wonder why the commissioners court would want to use the same auditors that the Foundation used, since those auditors apparently were, to be kind, a little sloppy.