Looks like they get paid the maximum possible, increasing automatically whenever that amount is raised: https://ecode360.com/15706463

Yeah, I was skimming and misread that part. The compensation for the elected duties is specified in the state law as being set by ordinance and it's the compensation for other employment with the township that is set by the auditors.

I'm guessing that is not going to happen this year!

Sounds like a bad idea to piss off the person setting your compensation.

Compensation is $3250

"EXACTLY! That's a whole pizza and a couple beers EVERY WEEK! And all they have to do is show up to a multi-hour meeting every single week and risk some dumbass making a big deal to the whole damn world about them not providing a bible to give an oath over! These corrupt bastards! I have to work for like 10 minutes for those benefits every week! These corrupt bastards!!1!" - HN tonight

You posted over 50 flamewar comments in this thread. That's egregious, and we ban accounts that behave this way. I'm not going to ban you right now, but please don't do it again.

We want curious conversation here. When you get to the point of fulminating about what "HN" has been saying, or you feel "HN" has been saying, the thread has left the path of curiosity a long time ago, and is well into the brush. We don't want that here.

I'm not saying your views are wrong (I have no idea what they are, and no idea what the situation is). But if your views are correct, this is the worst way to advocate for them, because it discredits them. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, if their pilfering town funds by 'employing' the surpivisors brother-in-law's landscaping company for 8x the normal cost...

I'm not saying that's the case, it's a made up scenario, but it's exactly how underpaid public servants "make up the difference", and it's why you need an auditor. The hired CPA wouldn't see anything wrong.

$1.66mm seems like a lot for a traffic signal at an intersection. I’m sure an auditor could find a at least a few interesting items to dig in to and validate.

Good thing that the township retained an actual CPA, then. It'd be sketch as hell if a fucking sci-fi author slash real estate agent was in charge of an audit.

Yes we all know that auditing firms are never thoroughly corrupt/incompetent, nobody could have foreseen Enron or Lehman Brothers (or loads of smaller scale cases)...

Oh come on. Nobody said it never happens, but do you have any reason to suspect Maher Dussel is corrupt or incompetent? Do you have any reason to believe this random guy is as qualified as a team of CPAs to audit public sector books?

He's probably not more qualified, but independent oversight of public expenditures serves a valuable purpose. A hired accountant has no incentive to point out that it might be wasteful or unnecessary to spend Y money on a thing X as long as everything is done by the book.

Wirecard is one of the recent big ones.

With government, the FIRST place you look are benefits to employees.

In this case, they are paying $570,906 in 2022 in Pension benefits for 4 active employees. Now they certainly aren't paying $142,726.50 to each active employee so that means they have a string of retired workers that they're paying a good amount of money for.

An appropriate thing for an auditor to do is to then research how those employees earned their benefits. Did they "buy 15 years of tenure" for $3,200 thereby increasing their yearly benefit $40,000 per year? Did they "work" 120 hours per week of overtime in their last year to jack up their final year salary? These are real examples from a town near me.

None of these things are illegal and won't necessarily be flagged by a CPA who is being paid by the people giving or receiving these benefits. But they sure stand out to taxpayers who are footing the bill!

Think about it - all a CPA will do is check to make sure a supervisor signed off that someone worked 120 hours of overtime. They aren't going to investigate how that is even possible or likely.

wait wait. You're saying they do this thankless job for the pure joy of civic duty? They get nothing out of their position? And so... because they're so pure and selfless, it's fine if they never seat a duly elected auditor? What?

No. I'm saying that they will definitely seat the auditor and that the elected auditor is being a dick instead of being a reasonable person about his situation and the fact that his interlocutors are mostly just confused.

Why 'definitely' when they didn't seat the last one?

Let’s also not forget that Person C does not seem to know anything themselves about the rules and procedures.

They just showed up at the next meeting hoping everyone had everything figured out for them.

I find the entire attitude here extremely interesting, because it’s most likely a repudiation of their preconceived ideas. The idea that there is this singular powerful “establishment” that has all the power and works hard to keep outsiders from breaking up their way of doing things.

What this episode really shows is that government in the US is singularly disorganized, driven by largely a whole bunch of self interested individuals, who are largely winging it as they go along.

If indeed it was the “establishment” that was so worried about this auditor position, why would they not put up a better fight to win the election in the first place? The actual winner seems surprised they won, which indicates they didn’t put much effort in campaigning. The “establishment” surely has enough money to run a campaign in a tiny town to win the election?

Further, if the “establishment” was so scared of this individual and so powerful, why would they do something silly like basically say something that is contrary to the law over email? They’d probably be better off just ignoring him and/or having an attorney come up with a legally plausible communication that would have conveyed that he isn’t likely to be seated without doing so in a manner that is apparently contrary to the clear law.

> They just showed up at the next meeting hoping everyone had everything figured out for them.

So what? He turned up, and they said they'd swear him in, then sent a letter saying they wouldn't. If the first auditor was not needed, why not mention that at the meeting?

It's also not clear the "rules and procedures" are being followed here - it appears normal to swear in Auditors after their election, is it unreasonable to expect that process to be figured out beforehand?

I've served on councils like this before and if anything unexpected comes up, the default answer is always going to be "uhh we're not sure but we'll address it at the next meeting." Sometimes someone may know the answer but more often than not the manager or solicitor will get the answer before the next caucus meeting and they'll formulate the actual response then.

They didn't defer addressing the issue, they said they'd swear him in. Also, since they had been operating without an elected auditor since the last time they elected one, did no one there know this?

> and they'll formulate the actual response then

How long should he wait until he can officially conclude he's being given the run-around?

So, it's okay that they refuse to swear in the elected auditors because you think the position is unimportant? In what other circumstances do you think it's okay for government entities to ignore the law?

The auditors have duties beside auditing, and the law[1] explicitly say they "shall perform the other duties of the office" even if an accountant has been appointed. There is clearly a reason the town government dosen't want anyone to preform one or more of these other duties.

[1]: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/HTM/1933/0/0069....

Again, I don't see a refusal. I see a game of telephone gone wrong.

> I don't see a refusal

> The supervisors assured me that I would be able to swear in at either the next meeting

> three days after that meeting, I received an email from the township manager to the effect of, "sorry, we hired a CPA to do that job and we have no need for elected auditors to oversee the township."

Is seems these town meetings are roughly 3 weeks apart, and he has contacted various people who have not returned his call. The previous auditor (elected) describes as being given a "runaround" also.

So yes, they didn't refuse, they just ghosted his attempts to resolve the issue. What's the big difference? As long as they stay silent, they technically didn't refuse? At what point can you say they are acting in bad-faith?

Noted. I've never gotten involved in local politics but friends who have seem to have nothing but stories of batshit crazies coming out of the woodwork for the past two years. So this is what that looks like? But giving him the benefit of the doubt that he means to do the job, how is he supposed to request the books for an audit if the council won't acknowledge his position?

I can assure you "the past two years" are irrelevant, I've been involved with politics at various levels since 2004 and local politics are almost exclusively the domain of people unqualified and uninterested in anything else.

That doesn't even approach answering my question. You're just saying he did things wrong, which is not what I was asking about: why you said he'd 'definitely' be seated.

> They're complaining about not being sworn in. To an auditor position. In a township.

Why is this weird, if this is an elected position? Doesn't he need to be sworn in for the position to be official?

> When an accountant or firm is appointed under subsection (a) or (b), the board of auditors shall not audit, settle or adjust the accounts audited by the appointee but shall perform the other duties of the office.

If you can't audit any accounts then what would the "other duties of the office" be for a board of auditors?

He lists those in one of the follow-up tweets :

> The primary duties and functions of the Board of Auditors include:

>

> - Acting as a fiscal watchdog for the citizens of the township

> - Auditing, settling, and adjusting the accounts of all elected or appointed officials who received or disbursed funds during the immediate preceding calendar year

> - Setting salaries for supervisors who are employed by the township

> - Auditing records of the local district justice, if deemed appropriate

> - Filing the annual report for the township, unless the Board of Supervisors contracts an outside accounting firm per the code. (Nevertheless, in some townships auditors work together very closely with the township staff to insure that all township funds are properly expended and accounted for.)

> - Hearing cases involving financial loss to the township as caused by any elected or appointed official, who have acted in a violation of law or beyond the scope of their office

There are a few things here the supervisors might not want an outsider to look into.

Determining compensation for supervisors _employed by the tonwhsip_... which this township doesn't have.

He and the other elected auditor should make that oath in front of the notary public and then make the township supervisors pay out their own pocket for the elections they held knowing they would ignore the outcome.

But according to the email he got, none of the supervisors are employed by the township, so there is no compensations to be determined.

I wonder if supervisor compensation can be determined for the current year without a quorum of auditors?

There's a (small) chance none of them are compensated. My municipality is all volunteer.

There's an enormous chance none of them are compensated. The township is in the middle of rural PA and has a population of like 17K. I would be astounded if any of the supervisors are compensated.

They are compensated. They get the max they are allowed under state law.

"the compensation for each Supervisor is hereby set at $3,250 per annum"

That isn't much different from being uncompensated.

Most Americans make less than $35k a year. This amount could be substantial to some people.

Well, you'd have to work out how much the pay is on an hourly basis. It doesn't sound like a role that consists of nothing but collecting a stipend.

But more broadly, there's an active debate over whether governmental posts should either (a) pay enough that someone could live off of one; or (b) require the person holding the post to have independent means. This is clearly on the (b) side, often felt to exclude many social classes from being able to hold a post in the government. (And sometimes invoked as a reason to overlook corruption by the officeholder - "how else are they supposed to support themselves?")

These generally aren't full time positions and the meetings happen in the evenings. It's possible to have a job and hold office.

This is blatantly false - if you work second or third shift, you cannot hold these titles.

Does that make any e.g. factory worker ineligible for titles? You might say to yourself 'but you don't want factory workers im office' - and then you'd be saying that some classes are worth more than others, that these are 'second class' citizens in the eyes of the law.

And that would be a pretty disgusting viewpoint.

If you can hold a job or make money, perhaps you should make nothing from the position, otherwise there should probably be a living wage stipulation.

Most Americans make more than $35k.

Median income is $42k.

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

I wonder where this discrepancy is coming from.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

The St Louis Fed website also shows census.gov as the source. Perhaps one statistic is including people who do not work such as old people and the other is not?

That graph is CPI-U-RS adjusted which means it's tracking spending power not actual dollars paid. You want "current dollars" not "adjusted dollars"

Your tone and attitude are extremely antagonistic, and are not welcome here on HN.

HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) specifically state "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

I suggest reading and commenting appropriately, in which case you're far more likely to receive thoughtful replies to your comments.

It's not in the middle of rural PA, it's suburbs of the state capital. The population is low because the Carlisle Pike shopping district runs through most of it. Source: I grew up there.

They are compensated. I was also on a council at one point, not even 30 minutes from Silver Spring, with a population of less than 3,000. I had 802 constituents. We were paid $50/mo., which calculated out to about $3/hour with the lengths of the various meetings.

2 is a quorum, so he and the guy he talked too could do it. Maybe not this year, but next year.

I didn't go look up the rule listed there, it might be pretty narrow.

Surely that's an incentive for the supervisors to swear in a quorum of auditors? Otherwise who's going to determine their compensation?

The email says they have no supervisors.

It says they have no supervisor _working for the township_. They do have at least two supervisors that were just sworn in for 6 years according to the meeting agenda posted before. I guess that means they are fulfilling their duties uncompensated and thus no compensation needs to be determined.

Ah, you're right. I got confused because the township managers were incorrectly referred to as "supervisors" earlier in the Twitter thread.

> I loved the part of the thread where, instead of going on a rant, he simply replied to the email acknowledging that he wasn't needed for most of his job but still wanted to be sworn in at the next meeting. /s

...yes?

If your job scope is reduced, you still have to go through onboarding. Is that not obvious?

Unless you're objecting to 'next', because it should only take them a couple minutes and there's no reason to delay.

Yeah when my job scope is reduced I normally go on a twitter rant about The Establishment instead of, idk, asking for clarification and asserting the part of the job I still want to do.

Fair point that we don't have the whole story.

It is unclear if he even needs to be sworn in.

The fact that they gave the previously-elected guy the same runaround gives me the impression that it isn't a misunderstanding.

Attacking other users like that will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.htmland don't post like that to HN again.

Or they don't want an auditor to see how much the supervisors brother-in-law landscaping company gets for mowing the park lawns.

That's why you need an auditor, hired CPA's will only verify that the checks were indeed sent to the intended party, not that they are used appropriately.

Don't be naive that these things don't happen, they do.

give me a line item that looks off. Jut one.

https://www.sstwp.org/DocumentCenter/View/10907/2022-Final-B...

You must be the mayor. I can't imagine anyone else getting so upset

The parent probably used ’mayor’ in the general sense. Different types of administrative subdivisions have different names for their political leaders depending on where they are in the world, and nobody could possibly be expected to keep track of them all. Even if they are not called mayors in this exact case you full well knew what the parent meant.

>Consider the possibility that I'm genuinely fed up with dumbass useless people running for local office.

I don't mean to make light of a serious problem, but it's funny how widely that sentiment is echoed.

Compare the quality of people running for low-paid local political office to... basically any other vocation. It's a widely echoed sentiment because it is, more often than not, true.

Regardless of anything else, it seems like a good idea to have a budget of 14M dollars audited by the person elected to do so.

Then lobby to have the state law changed I guess?

You already got your answer somewhere else.

OP made 3 equivalent posts asking me the same question.

There is ~20,000 in golf fees and outings.....

In the revenue category...

is this sarcasm?

a con artist will very consistently try to invest in their own scams, does not mean they think of them as genuine

The candidate that wins the most votes in a democratic election shall get the office. That principle should not be up for debate, and It's absolutely terrifying how many people are rejecting democracy in this country right now. It's the system we have for nonviolent transfer of power, and if we let those in power just ignore the results of election, we could find we have no peaceful mechanisms for replacing elected officials.

I think it's unquestionably better to just accept the results of the vote, regardless of what you think about the candidate.

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. No more of this, please.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: it looks like all your comments in the past year have been quite against the intended spirit of the site. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please stop doing that, we'd appreciate it.