A Heartfelt THANK YOU!!

When the official votes were posted by the State Board of Elections on Friday, I called Tom Wagner and left him a voice message saying that the voters have spoken; I congratulated him on his victory and wished him the best.

I want to again thank all those who supported me and helped in this effort especially my family; my wife, Maggie and our daughters, Alexandra and Jacqueline. It’s not easy running for any office let alone running state wide especially when you have a 2 year old and a 14 week old and you’re never home.

I also want to thank Governor Markell, so many of our elected and public officials throughout the state, the men and women of organized labor, especially Harry Gravell, the members of the building trades, everyone connected with the AFL-CIO especially Sam Lathem and Donna Smits, CBTU, Mel Phillips, “Peaches” Whalen and Kimoko Harris, the DSEA, President Diane Donohue, Howard Weinberg and Tim Barchak, the Stonewall Democrats and Mitch Crane. I also want to thank a young woman who did more in this campaign in two short months than I and many others could ever have imagined, Kate Walker. Eight weeks ago maybe eight hundred people knew me and I was down 20 points in the polls and ended up losing the race by only 2563 votes. Granted, it’s not easy losing but we came a long way in eight weeks.

We conducted an honest campaign and dealt with the issues. I said from day one that this campaign was about following the law. The central issue in this campaign was and is that State law is clear: “The Auditor of Accounts shall conduct post audits of local school district tax funds, budget and expenditures annually.”

The law exists to protect the people of Delaware from waste and abuse of their tax dollars that go into school districts.

Approximately 10 years ago, the State Auditor stopped following the law. He ceased doing individual audits of the local school district funds. Those audits used to be called “Local Fund Financial Statement (Component Unit) And Single Audit Reports.”

These individual local fund audit reports for each school district complied with state law. The section of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) Mr. Wagner displays on his state website with the local fund totals does not comply with state law.

Mr. Wagner claims that local funds are audited as part of the State's financials in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). The purpose of this report is to ensure that the financial statements of the State are fairly presented. As part of that audit, the conducting CPA firm determines which agencies and districts of the State are considered high risk and material to the State's financial statements. During this process, several of the school districts are determined to be immaterial and low risk. Because of this, those districts are audited on a rotational basis. This means that not all of the 19 districts' local tax funds, budgets, and expenditures are audited annually.

While the audit of the State's financials meets auditing standards set forth by the General Accountability Office and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, it does not mean that the audit satisfies the requirements of Delaware law. The auditing standards do not require that each of the 19 school districts be selected each year to have some form of testing done on local tax funds, budgets, and expenditures. Delaware law does require this.

Ten years ago, in direct violation of state law and without the General Assembly's approval, Tom Wagner decided to stop doing individual audits (“Local Fund Financial Statement (Component Unit) And Single Audit Reports”) for each of the 19 school districts.

Mr. Wagner claims that the audit of the State's financials duplicates the work that used to be done in the separate school district audits. This is not true. When the separate audits were done each year, it guaranteed that every district had a visit from an auditor that looked at their local funds. This is no longer done.

What does this means to the taxpayers and why should you care:

1) Billions of the taxpayers’ money paid through property taxes to the districts have been unaudited since approximately 2000.

2) The financial failure of Christina School District and the theft at Laurel School District may have been identified sooner if local fund audits of each of the 19 school districts had been conducted annually.

3) The taxpayers should be paying for a State Auditor to uphold the requirements of Delaware law; to hold State agencies accountable to Delaware law and regulations; and to identify fraud, waste, and abuse. Instead, Delaware's taxpayers are paying for a State Auditor that does not even meet the sections of Delaware Code that govern his own Office.

More important than winning an election is bringing to the forefront issues that profoundly affect all of us yet have long escaped public scrutiny. It is my hope that now that this campaign is over, the State Auditor will comply with the law for the benefit of the taxpayers of Delaware.

Thank you,

Richard Korn

Endorsements

Stay Informed