Montgomery legislators, officials scuffle over transparency

From the Washington Post. Now even the Post can't get their MPIA'd documents from Montgomery County government. How's that for transparency?

By Victor Zapana, Posted at 05:59 PM ET, 02/02/2012 To read the full article, go here.

It was supposed to be a mundane Thursday meeting, an update on how the Montgomery County government audits itself. But by the time it ended, County Council members butted heads with the executive branch over how transparent it is.

On Thursday, council members met to discuss reports from two county auditing agencies — the inspector general’s office, which serves the County Council, and the Office of Internal Audit, which serves County Executive Isiah Leggett (D).

and

The construction funding report, which the county did provide to The Post, said that county officials investigated how $27 million dollars of county construction funding was used and that they could not properly account for nearly 30 percent of it.

County officials did not mention that finding. Instead, they disclosed another finding of the report — that there were good internal controls in place to monitor construction funding.

So, let's get this straight: There are good internal controls to monitor the construction funding. Thirty percent of construction funding cannot be accounted for. This implies that county officials knew about the missing 30 percent of our tax dollars, and it was fine with them. Have I got that right? Business as usual in Montgomery County.