What do you do if you are a lazy do-nothing auditor who has been sucking on the government teet for 25 years, and someone asks to see your schedule? You try to wrap yourself in an expensive FOIA estimate and hope the request goes away. That was Wagner’s plan when Brenda Mayrack asked to see his schedule to check up on why his office has been chronically understaffed.
From Mayracks FB page:
Check the facts: The State Auditor’s office is critically understaffed, with about 10 budgeted positions sitting open. Almost 40 percent of a staff that should be watching our tax dollars … isn’t there. Tom Wagner said in debate that he turns back “close to a million dollars a year in salary dollars because I can’t fill the positions.” Why not? If uncompetitive salaries are the problem, he has been in position for 25 years to keep pace with changing times. It hasn’t worked.
* Wagner during the debate on WDEL: “I had 57 people when I took office. I’m down to less than 20 right now. I have the budgetary people. I have the salary dollars. I turn back close to a million dollars a year in salary dollars because I can’t fill the positions, because my salaries are uncompetitive to hire people.”
* Is the State Auditor’s Office attending local job fairs? After not seeing the office on the list of attendees at a University of Delaware job fair for accounting students, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the State Auditor’s schedule: “For the year 2014, the public schedule of R. Thomas Wagner, Jr., including all meetings and public events.” The response from his office: “In order to construct information in response to request below and based what we have available in the Office, I estimate it will run approximately $1,191.” And that’s the cost for sending it by email so we didn’t incur any copying or mailing fees.
It’s expensive to check the facts with the State Auditor.
That’s outrageous. Wagner’s office is understaffed and because he is too lazy to go out and recruit candidates for jobs, and now the embarrassed “auditor” tries to charge $1,200 to keep his laziness covered up. Pitiful.