By:  Diane Benjamin

The statement below is from the City of Bloomington’s CAFR for the year ended 4/30/2019.  Yes, they finally got around to posting it but it still hasn’t been presented to the Council.  Of course data that is 6 months old is pretty useless in the private sector, why care about what government reports.  https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=23337

First a little fun.  Remember the award every level of government seems to receive for great financial reporting (after they pay for it)?  https://blnnews.com/2016/02/25/bloomington-buying-awards/

See PDF page 15.  Included in this year’s financial statements is the award the City of Bloomington received LAST YEAR.  PDF page 13 has a note saying yes the included award is from last year.  The City Manager assumes they will get the award again for these statement, they just don’t have it yet.

---

This statement is on PDF page 9

The purpose of posting that statement is to prove Michele Anderson isn’t capable of being the McLean County Auditor.  She is down to one employee, the rest were transferred to the Treasurer’s office.  She recently created more mayhem by changing the County accounting system all by herself.

Dissect the statement above.  Except at year end, all revenue is recorded when received.  The City might be expecting $100,000 as a result of some tax revenue they know they will receive, but that amount is not included in the financial reports until they actually receive it.

The same thing happens to expenses.  When a bill is received and needs to be paid – that is when the expense is recorded.

Basically this means the City of Bloomington is doing “cash basis accounting” until year end.  That is when “accrual” takes over and all revenue expected and expenses incurred are recorded.

---

This is the reason the VenuWorks audited financial statements showed a larger loss than what they reported.  All those pesky expenses weren’t accrued.  CIAM did the same thing when then managed the Coliseum.  

---

I FOIA’d Michelle Anderson’s emails.  The Treasurer, who is now writing checks with the same people who used to work for Michele, wrote this email:

Keep in mind, the employees writing checks are doing it exactly like they did when they worked in the Auditor’s office.  Nothing has changed except Michelle.

Michelle responded with a very long email within 26 minutes:

I find it hilarious emails likely sent using a County email address had that information redacted.  I didn’t FOIA emails using a personal account.

Michelle did state the County nursing home is on full accrual since their financial situation is precarious.  I didn’t receive anything saying the Treasurer disagreed.

Michelle’s next paragraph was this:

Once again, the exact same people are paying the bills now as did under Michelle.  I seriously doubt they are “just randomly” assigning dates.  If Michelle’s office doesn’t hold up invoices they will likely be recorded in the month incurred.

Keep in mind, the County was incurring late charges because Anderson’s office was not submitting them on a timely basis to the Treasurer for payment.

The email ended with this:

Michelle is talking about the Board requesting full accrual for the nursing home.  The Board never requested full accrual for the entire County.

Anderson’s last statement proves why she is unfit.  The Treasurer’s office had been paying the bills for 20 months at this point.  There were no problems until Anderson decided to tell the Treasurer what date to use in the General Ledger.  This led to Department Heads not being able to understand the monthly reports because Michelle was making entries herself to change dates when McNeil refused to back date bills.

If Anderson files to run again in 2020 she must be defeated.  She is personally responsible for creating havoc and has for years.  If she does run she will have a GOP opponent.

Why do you think she only has one employee?  That alone speaks volumes

See Michelle’s entire email here:  andersonFOIA2_Redacted