Jackson Jambalaya

I'm shocked...shocked, I say....to hear the city is run by the mathematically challenged!

It used to be called "fuzzy math," but now it's called "Jackson math." Alternatively, "JPS math."

Hiring people who can crunch numbers and remind the Democrat showboats of fiscal limitations does not fit the progressive agenda. Government is supposed to have an unlimited pocket so why worry about accounting? It's the last thing on the Democrat mind. The last thing.

We can not audit this document, until we get this document.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

We should not be having to change 2/3rds of the numbers on every page as we do.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA


Been doing business with Tann Brown Russ for decades. Great guys, but will not feel sorry for them when they don’t get paid.

Who holds the city accountable? All state agencies are held accountable to DFA. What a total cluster.

Being a CPA myself, I don’t know why any firm would torture their partners and staff by engaging the COJ. There isn’t enough money in the world worth that stress.

Yeah, this is shameful. If you watch the meetings of the city council where they were trying to approve the budgets for the following fiscal year, almost every department made comments about how they had no idea where they stood on the prior year budget vs. actuals because they had to "wait for the auditor to tell them" - that is not how an audit is supposed to work and not the attitude the city should have.

They wouldn't even share preliminary numbers with a caveat that they were unaudited and subject to change if adjustments were found... because they knew there would be tons of adjustments as usual. I would LOVE for the city to have to publish what they initially gave the auditors so that everyone could see how much of a mess this administration is (even moreso than we already have). As the audit partner pointed out, it's not their job to do the city's accounting for them, they're supposed to be auditing the City's work, not their own.

For the record, I'm not putting all or even most of the blame on the city employees - it's not their fault that departments are understaffed and they aren't properly trained. This all falls back on the mayor and his misplaced priorities. What is it? 15 lawyers and 1 engineer? Looks like we need more accountants too.

It's not just lack of management experience. COJ employees clearly are not qualified or trained for their positions - or they simply don't care. The auditors are burning their billable hours correcting information that should be reconciled every month. The firm may need to fire the client.

There is a big difference between sloppy bookkeeping and theft. This is an example of theft! Get the proper governing body to audit and then send some people to jail. This is exactly why LAMAR ADAMS’ ass sits in the Madison county jail right now.

@1:55 Agree wholeheartedly. I've been through some audits from hell, but I'm confident this one would top them all. I bet that audit team has some good stories though!

The most incompetent administration in the history of this city. And that’s saying something.

Following up on 1:55: . . . and the mayor acts like he's doing them a favor by giving them the city's audit business.

1:24, This isn't a political issue. It's a management/competency issue.

let me guess, they ran off most of the experienced help over the last 15-20 years and replaced them with like minded and looking replacements, that have no business counting to anything higher than 10 ....

The employees don’t give a damn about anything except playing cornhole at the M-Bar. They are all uneducated, I’ll-mannered, idiots, that think the Mair is good a being a Mair. Quite embarrassing, the City with Soul.

My employer was forced to assist the COJ with some services in the not too distant past, and I can not make you understand how inept and horrible the staff that I dealt with was.
I needed a few spreadsheets completed, and it was only to their benefit to do so...and they simply had no grasp of the basic concepts needed.

After MANY back and forth attempts that were utterly garbage, I had to pretty much advise them in the most simplistic terms and walk step by step just to get some semblance of a correct form from them.

I cannot imagine living there...knowing these incredibly stupid people are trusted with my tax dollars.

As things currently stand, the best plausible auditor and adjudicator for the city of Jackson would be a violently active Jackson Dome Volcano under the Mississippi Coliseum.

Trying to figure out how this is newsworthy. Isn't this normal for COJ?

Just another example of the incompetency of this Administration and the Mayor's inability to lead.

JPS and the City's schools were failing so badly that the State almost had to take them over. But for the Kellogg Foundation coming in and offering to help, JPS would still be under State control.

The Water system completely failed, and the State and Feds had to come in and take control of that.

The Wastewater system is failing, so the Feds have had to come in and take control of that too.

Crime is flourishing and JPD is being hamstrung by the Mayor, so the State has had to bring in the Capitol Police to help handle that too.

And as shown by this article, the Finance Dept is failing miserably too and can't even come up with accurate figures.

And although the garage collection was working well, the Mayor had to come in and screw that up too and the residents had to go without any collection for weeks.

Someone please tell me one thing, just one thing, in the City that is being run properly. It's a shame that the citizens of Jackson, the majority of whom are African American, cannot depend on the City to accomplish the most basis of tasks or provide the essential services upon which the citizens rely on the City to provide.

Mr Mayor, you keep saying you're trying to make things better for the African American citizens of Jackson, but in light of the above, you're truly failing to do so and in fact making their lives harder and worse. You say that you want the City to control all of its assets, but yet most have now had to be taken over by the State or Feds because the City is simply incapable of doing the job. Look at where we are right now and tell me the City should still be in control when it has failed so miserably when it has had control of all of the above.

At what point can someone force the City into receivership like what happened in Detroit ?

Scott is a good guy. When a cpa lights into a client like that at a public meeting, they are begging to lose the engagement. I don’t know why they took it in the first place. They could have handled this privately but both parties seem intent on separating.
Meanwhile Hinds County has not completed an audit since this new board took office three and a half years ago. Let that sink in.

I think the auditor would have loved to say, "I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER!!!"

To turn 2:06's comments into a question:

" Are COJ employees.....not qualified or trained for their positions - or they simply don't care?" The answer is: Yes

4:09, most likely a creditor. A judge or legislator is a loooong shot. But a bond rating agency or institutional investor in the bonds could. It’s not like there is not publicly available documentation.

As it has been said on this blog many times, there is no recall mechanism to recall a Mayor in the State of Mississippi. However, there is a legal mechanism for the citizens of a city to change the FORM of the city government. Get your %10 petition together for a special election to change from a Mayor-Council Government to a Council-Manager Government. Let the Mayor sit in the corner as a figurehead while a professional takes care of business.

https://www.sig.msstate.edu/sites/www.sig.msstate.edu/files/2022-07/TechBrief_PrimerForms.pdf

"The incompetence in [the City of Jackson] is absolutely radiant..."
paraphrased from Dr. Bock's speech to Miss Christie, written by Paddy Chayefsky, starring George C. Scott, the Hospital, 1971.

This has gone too far... Feds must take over and contract legitmate businesses to run Jackson....

No, @1:24 pm, no, no, no, no, no. Turn off the Hannity. This has nothing at all to do with any political party affiliation. You need to go put on an edgier thinking cap.

Antar’s idea of a city-wide equitable economy is based solely on perpetual reparations. There’s a reason why 10 years have passed without water and garbage collection bills being sent to 30-40% of the city’s customers. Antar believes they shouldn’t have to pay a plug nickel for any of it, nor lift a finger in kind.

If Antar knows anything, it’s how to get by without lifting a finger.

The reason this stuff happens is because it can. There is no accountability anywhere in the city government. I have a CFO and financial staff. I try to hire skill and competence. And I would never tolerate this type of incompetence. This is unreal.

This is what happens when your entire workforce is functionally illiterate and can't do simple math. But, they have the one KEY qualification. Anyone know what that is????? Doesn't matter if they are capable of doing the actual work.

When the Director and Deputy Director of Finance Administration have only a high school education and they are being directed by by someone who used to handled McDonald’s finances, what do you expect.

The dog ate the weasel's class work, the slippery mayor having neither class nor work ethic sufficient for homework, other than sitting for hair and nails boutique pampering whilst phoning Richard's Disposal and sundry anarchist groups for investment return status.

In most businesses, if the bookkeeper was making this many errors as pointed out by the auditor, that bookkeeper would be fired immediately. So whatcha gonna do, Mr Mayor ? You gonna fire these people who obviously don't know how to do the job, or are you gonna keep them onboard and allow them to continue to make the same mistakes ? I'm hoping for the former but betting you do the latter.