PAT ANDERSON SECRETLY CHANGES REPORT

08/22/2006

Says to the press that Otto was wrong – then privately uses Otto’s corrections

ST. PAUL (8/22/06) – With no fanfare or public acknowledgement, State Auditor Patricia Anderson this week released a corrected version of her report on special-district finances after her DFL challenger Rebecca Otto pointed out over $180 million in errors last week.

Non-operating revenues for enterprise funds, which include things like hospitals and electric agencies, were incorrectly listed in the report as totaling “$389.0 million,” until Otto pointed out the error.  The new report now lists them as “569.1 million,” a difference of some $180 million.

To the press, however, Anderson was singing a different tune.

“Otto got it wrong today,” Anderson rebutted. “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.”

The errors Otto pointed out were changed in the report, but the report’s date remains “August 8, 2006” and there are no footnotes indicating that the report was amended.

“Pat Anderson’s competence has already been called into question numerous times,” said Minnesota DFL Chair Brian Melendez. “Now we must question her integrity as well. An honest public servant would have admitted the error, corrected it and called it to the attention of everyone who may have been relying on the earlier numbers.”

“The state auditor should care that state departments and the public are working with the right numbers,” said Melendez, “I’d like to know if she warned anyone that she’d made and corrected a mistake. If you read the newspapers, you’d certainly assume that everything was just fine. But if the numbers can change after the fact, without notice to the public, then the public can never rely on the auditor’s numbers.”