It is amazing she can find anything with the secret society running everything. If she keeps finding stuff, they may take her pencils away.

Here's more "loosey-goosey money" Sam Rand money that has been disguised. Remember when Sammy had a hissy-fit over TriMet wanting to stop subsidizing high school student free transportation? He was going to charge TriMet for rental space for bus stops. They got together and decided to share the cost for free bus rides. Where do you think Portland's share came from? Sam took a concocked $200,000 from the $51 Million 3rd rebuilding of SW Moody in "supposed" cost savings. Go by Street Car, again.

It's all like Sam taking $20 Million from the Sellwood bridge project, when it wasn't even fully designed 2 years ago, and claiming "some cost savings" and giving it to Milwaukie Lightrail.

What a manipulated, loose-goosey city we live in.

Too bad the Auditor's Office has no real power to enforce recommendations.

The power to "SHAME" only works on those capable of feeling that particular emotion.

My guess is that the money to the dead employee was a "final" paycheck (ha!). I'm sure a couple of city employees die every year. The estate is still owed their final pay plus vacation and any other payout.

"Shame" only works when there's enough people who care, and Portland's full of closed-minded true believers who refuse to even consider that their faith is being taken advantage of.

Portland may also be full of people who have thrown up their hands when things are so out of whack, for many life is tough enough making ends meet without having to deal further with the city shenanigans.

I once threw up my hands, then finally I threw them down again, and got out. I won't sugar-coat it, moving isn't easy. But it was well worth it.

You'll never find a place totally free of waste, but at least you can find a place where they simply can't waste anywhere near this effectively.

I didn't want to be the last sucker at the table.

Having been an accountant with COP for several years before recently retiring, I'm not sure there's really that much fire, or smoke, here. (And I read through the entire report, though fairly quickly.) The accountants did not have access to information regarding compliance with city license rules, though we could (and I often did) look up information in the State of Oregon business registry. Plus, due diligence could be done at the start of a contract, then the vendor could be late renewing a license, and that's extremely time consuming to research when most bureaus are making hundreds of payments a month. There was supposed to be an interface with the SAP financial software, but it was not in place when I retired.

Duplicate vendors were somewhat common following the conversion to SAP, which went live in November of 2008, but were fairly quickly weeded out. Central Accounting manages vendor set-up in the system, but City Council has put pressure on OMF to achieve all of those "savings" SAP was supposed to bring to the City, thus putting pressure to reduce staff levels.

I think a bigger problem, not addressed by the auditor, is the use of procurement cards (essentially credit cards), where a payment could be made by the p-card, and also by check. In the last bureau in which I worked, I know we found one duplicate, thanks to the integrity of the vendor.