Who’s Watching the Watchdog: Part Deux

Remember this?  And this?  And then this, and it fizzled?  I have to admit, I was proud of the “RPM Otto-matic Press Releases” title.

State Auditor Pat Anderson has made a colossal blunder in her game of “She said, she said” with DFL challenger Rebecca Otto.  In a recent interview, Anderson said “Otto got it wrong today…She clearly does not understand basic governmental accounting. Otto claimed there were hundreds of millions of dollars in errors, when in fact there were none.”  If there were no errors, why did Ms. Anderson amend the total revenue figure in the report in question after Rebecca Otto’s charges were made public?Screenshots of the offending page can be seen here.  You can clearly see that the total revenue figure cited on this page has been changed.  As far as I know, no email was sent by the Auditor’s office indicating this change, and it’s a biggie – $180.1 million.

To be fair, it appears to be an issue with simple arithmetic – according to a cursory examination of the subsequent figures contained in the report, the larger figure is correct.  However, if the smaller previous figure were used or cited by anyone before the Auditor made this stealth change, it would represent a fairly egregious error.

The only thing that changes, as far as I can see, is that Rebecca Otto examined this report in considerable depth, and forced the Auditor to re-examine the numbers as well, thus identifying this error.  What would have happened had Otto not identified various issues within this report?  Would we all have gone our merry ways, missing this one hundred eighty million dollars from the state’s financial position?  Most importantly, did political expedience outweigh the need to inform the taxpaying public that the original report was in error?

Answers, Madam Auditor – I’m sure your political allies will be more than happy to offer them on your behalf.