A Near-Perfect Accounting

Minneapolis
Council 14 members working in the Hennepin County General Accounting Office of Budget and Finance have sent an outside auditing firm home with lint in their pockets.

The company, PRG-Schultz USA Inc., conducted a disbursement audit of the accounts payable division. Evaluators reviewed transactions — 301,000 of them totaling nearly $1 billion from January 1997 through July 2000 — and determined that the unit was 99.99 percent accurate. PRG receives 40 percent of any items they recover. Their take-home pay: a scant $5,490.48

Says Mark Stenglein, a county commissioner and chair of the budget committee, "Think about it: 301,000 transactions, a billion dollars — and they find nothing. I'll match that against any private company."

Stenglein,[...], brought the information to a political screening session held by Council 14. Said a staff representative of the document, "The report says that public employees are pretty damned efficient. We should have more private corporations run like Hennepin County."