Auditor gets audited

City Auditor William Squillace sparked a little contretemps with the mayor out in the hallway when he told the City Council that enterprise depts. (water, sewer, harbormaster) could use some of their free cash to reduce rates to their customers.

What a novel idea.

The only reaction I saw in chambers, other than slack jaws, was from Tom Jones, who kind of snorted (I was sitting right behind him).

But then the mayor appeared in the doorway of council chambers and beckoned Squillace out.

I couldn't hear what was said, but there was a lot of hand gestures, arm waving and glowering on the mayor's part.

A couple of weeks ago, I'm sure Squillace got a similar reaction when he turned to health director Jack Morris and said he had "jumped the gun" with some increases in revolving funds related to the health dept.

Speaking of which, it appears from last night's agenda that Morris has withdrawn the Medicare/Medicaid portion of the Regionalization Revolving Fund, which was at the last meeting sent to committee.

This is what the Order originally said:

THAT funds from the Medicare/Medicaid re-imbursement (and regional assessment) Revolving fund be used to maintain emergency planning programs, allow response to emergencies, and disperse funds for regionalization of Health Services...

I wonder if this is in any way related to Brian Derrivan (Ward 5) moving that the emergency management dept. line item be zeroed out?

Did you know that whole dept. (that would be emergency mgmt.) used to be run by volunteers, but now the city pays someone to be the director. I do believe Ralph Ayers used to fulfill that capacity, for free.

There were 14 orders on last night's agenda that related to revolving funds. According to the sometimes unreliable Wikipedia, A revolving fund is a fund or account whose income remains available to finance its continuing operations without any fiscal year limitation.

Within federal and state governments, law establishes revolving funds. Revolving funds, established for the purpose of carrying out specific activities, institute a basis under which financing for the cost of goods or services furnished to or by a government agency originate. Revolving funds are to be replenished through charges made for such goods or services.

I guess that in Squillace's estimation, everyone is jumping the gun.