George Dines and his fiscally challenged gang have struck again. Not unlike what has happened in the past, the chief financial officer for D.C. Public Schools declared there was a surplus for fiscal 2010 only to reverse himself and announce a deficit. What’s worse, it appears DCPS may have to return a bunch of money to the federal government.
The entire DCPS financial team, which actually works for Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi, should be fired. Dines should be the first out the door.
I’m not being rash. Check out this story.
According to knowledgeable city hall sources, on Sept. 29 Dines sent a note to then-Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee announcing a $4 million surplus for fiscal 2010, which was ending Sept. 30.
A few weeks later, he told now interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson there was, in fact, an $11.5 million deficit because of overspending. Further, he indicated DCPS may have to return an additional $12 million or more in grant money to the feds because spending was not correctly charged to the grant account.
Dines allegedly also advised DCPS officials they could borrow against the 2011 budget to address $11.5 million deficit from 2010. In other words, the man who’s supposed to keep DCPS on the fiscal straight and narrow appears to have caused the school system to violate the federal Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits agencies — including those in the federal enclave that is Washington — from overspending their authorized budgets.
How could such a mess develop? Good question.
Sources told me the computerized system used by Dines and other DCPS finance officials permits them to charge spending against any account — even when it’s the wrong account. It’s only after independent auditors come around at the end of the fiscal year does it all get sorted out.
“George hasn’t charged anything against the right account,” said one source. “Every year there is this game.”
Neither Rhee nor Henderson could be reached for comment. David Umansky, the chief financial officer’s spokesman, asserted there wasn’t any DCPS deficit.
“The budget will come out balanced,” he said.
That kind of parsing may not be as infamous as former President Bill Clinton’s dissection of the word “is,” but it’s equally ridiculous. When I asked Umansky about his assertion, he said, “That’s the information I received from the budget people at DCPS.”
So, we have traveled full circle to reach wholesale incompetence.
But this isn’t the first time Dines found a surplus that wasn’t there. Earlier this year, he told Rhee she had a $34 million surplus — enough to fund the newly ratified teachers contract that included retroactive pay increases. That pronouncement created a controversy, since at the start of fiscal 2010 a shortfall had prompted the termination of more than 200 DCPS employees.
Gandhi stepped in, rescuing his employee and announcing there wasn’t any unspent money. But, he said, there were sufficient funds to pay those raises. Rhee got blamed for “miscommunicating” the agency’s financial status. No doubt, the CFO and his team will attempt to do the same thing this time around.
What’s that adage about fooling me twice?
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
