Monthly Archive for July, 2011

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Kluge’s Finances Public in Bankruptcy Filings

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 16, 2011 in Business. 3 Comments

Patricia Kluge and William Moses’ finances are a matter of public record, Bryan McKenzie writes, and it’s not pretty. Bankruptcy filings have $2.65M in assets, and they’re $47.5M in debt. Those assets are $1.35M in real estate and $1.3M in cash, which is to say that they apparently have no cash, stock, bonds, or any liquid assets to speak of. Somehow they have an estimated monthly income of $16k (where does it come from—do they have jobs?) against monthly expenses of $21k, including $5.5k in rent.

If I’d just declared bankruptcy, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t move into a 6,600 square foot home, as these two financial wizards just did. The word for that is “mansion.” This is the part where I’d make a crack about how the rich are different than you and me, but they’re also different from the Kluges—because, at this point, I’m worth more than they are.

BoS Speakers Oppose Bypass Overwhelmingly

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 14, 2011 in Government and Transportation. 8 Comments

In response to the Board of Supervisors’ unannounced midnight vote to approve the long-dormant Western Bypass last month, a packed house objected to the new road at last night’s meeting, Aaron Richardson writes in the Progress. Over 100 people signed up to speak, overwhelmingly in opposition to either the road or the process by which it was approved. But it’s not clear that there’s any purpose to such objections—the BoS has already cast their votes.

Audit of Clerk’s Offices is a Bad Scene

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 9, 2011 in Law and Justice and Politics. 30 Comments

The Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts’ audits of the Charlottesville and Albemarle Circuit Courts Clerk’s Offices have found serious mistakes by both, Tasha Kates reports in the Daily Progress.

The audit of Debra Shipp’s office, in Albemarle (PDF) concludes that she “does not perform the required financial duties associated with her office,” specifically finding that she failed to pass along to the state $201k in fines and court costs, and is holding $255k that should be passed along to the state’s unclaimed property registry, among other significant failings. Out of a corpus of 48 cases that were analyzed for the audit, 25 (52%) had mistakes. Perhaps most alarming is this finding:

The Clerk again did not reconcile the operations bank account and resolve reconciling items for the entire audit period. In combination with two prior audits, the Clerk has not in effect reconciled the bank account since April 2008, a total of 32 months. It is critical the Clerk reconciles this account and makes necessary corrections to the accounting system monthly to ensure the bank statement, checkbook and accounting system agree.

Things aren’t quite as bad in Paul Garrett’s office, in the city, but that’s not saying much. The audit of his office (PDF) found that Garrett “does not properly enter fines and costs in the court’s automated accounting system,” as is required by state law. Of the corpus of 21 cases that were analyzed for the audit, 11 (52%) had mistakes.

Each report contains a letter of response from each clerk, explaining the cause of these problems and what their proposed solutions are. (Shipp notes in her letter, not incidentally, that her 21-year-old son died in a car accident in January, which has presumably caused the sorts of life-altering disruptions that one would expect.)

Wondering whether these sorts of problems are standard, or if this is unusual, I checked out the reports for Greene, Nelson, Fluvanna, Orange, Buckingham, and Augusta. All of them were flawless or quite nearly so.

The position of Clerk of Court is elected, for reasons that I’ve never quite understood. Shipp, a Democrat, was elected to an eight-year term in 2008. Garrett, also a Democrat, is running for reelection this year, and is being challenged for the nomination by two other Democrats, Pat Melampy and Llezelle Dugger.

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