State Auditor and Peformance Based Audits & the Whistleblower Program

In Our View: Incentives, Penalties | The Columbian

From the Columbian Newspaper urging support of State Auditor Brian Sonntag's performance based audits:

"This might sound like geeky microscience that appeals only to the most advanced pencil-pushers, but here’s why it matters to taxpayers: The state directs more than $10 billion annually (one-third of all state spending) to contracts for goods and services. And when contracts are “performance-based,” they deliver bigger bangs for the taxpayers’ bucks.

For many years, state agencies typically used “time-and-materials” contracts, which pay vendors based on time spent and quantity of materials used. Recently, though, the emphasis has properly shifted to performance-based contracts that pay vendors based on established outcomes or results."

Citizens and taxpayers of Washington State concerned with the performance of unelected state bureaucratic managers could have an effect by strongly supporting the State Auditor in conducting such audits as well as doing oversight on the State Auditor's work as well.

The legislature passed the Whistle Blower law to encourage state employees to make reports to the State Auditor. There needs to be an in depth audit and/or a journalistic investigation done on that program.

Employees using computers for personal reasons seems to have gotten the most attention in terms of the State Auditor in conducting whistle blower investigations while children at risk in licensed day care did not. In addition, the State Auditor stopped an investigation he initiated on unelected bureaucratic managers for concealing public records, for ordering public records be altered by creating a new record then deleting the original record and for removing documents from public records in violation of a criminal statute.

If the State Auditor needs someone to advocate for his office to get such investigations completed, if he's gotten pressure from somewhere to not make such investigations, I'd be glad to help his office out with that to accomplish the goal that licensed child day care means safe, healthy and happy children while their parents are at work.