Reply: Questionable Expenditures from MHPC‏

Dear MHPC - don't give up your day job.

 

I don't know how to tell you this, but MHPC will once again be embarassed when the facts behind the Maine State Housing Authority (MSHA) expenses becomes known. Almost every item you list has a legitimate explanation which will make MHPC look really incompetent. You guys just aren't very good investigators and you definitely don't understand financial accounting. Really - you need to stick to policy stuff and forget the investigatory schtick.

 

Let's talk about your findings as you describe them in "themainewire" on January 20. [http://www.themainewire.com/2012/01/luxury-hotels-magicians-massage-maine-housing-vendor-list-reveals-questionable-expenditures/]

 

First - in business, it is common to let employees have donations deducted automatically from their paychecks. The employer then has to make payments of those deductions to the employee-designated donees. That explains the MSHA payments to Maineshare,  EqualityMaine, Maine Equal Justice Partners, the Sierra Club,  Center for Community Change,  Maine Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods, the Maine Amateur Softball Association ,  Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Maine Women’s Fund, New Hampshire Society of CPAs, New Foundation for the Arts and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco,  and others.

 

Second - employees often have a health savings plan or a childcare plan managed by the employer. Allowable payments from such a plan would include martial arts facilities, Weight Watchers of Maine, chiropractors,  Healing Hands Therapeutic Massage, Maine Adoption Placement Services. MSHA collects the weekly deductions then turns around and sends a check to the health provider.

 

Third - MSHA pays for emergency short term housing for some people while they wait for their subsidized unit to get repaired etc. Thus they put clients up in hotels/motels/B&B's on a regular basis.

 

Fourth - MSHA probably provides for payments of dues/memberships on behalf of some employees either as a benefit or as a pass-through payroll deduction. Things such as Maine Women’s Journal, National Association of Women in Construction, Institute for Professional Businesswomen, Women in Need Industries, Women, Work & Community, Women Unlimited, and the Society of Women Engineers could fall into these categories.

 

To make a long story short, you have done a great job of listing payments of the type that many businesses find in their payables ledger - which they pay as a fiduciary rather than as a consumer of services. You have really gone overboard to identify much to do about nothing. I would hope that any of these payments that are for employees or clients might have names and other identifiers redacted - for privacy purposes. You insist on terrorizing these agencies with terrible conclusions drawn from unskilled investigatory efforts.

 

You really need to stay away from accounting and auditing and leave that to those who understand actual business practices. Move along now. These aren't the fraudsters you are looking for.

 

Kenneth A. Capron

Maine Policy Center

watchdog@maine.rr.com

207-797-7891