Hillsborough County Is Just Buzzing To Be Slammed

Could it be that we just live in Hillsborough County and "it is what it is".

Take a little time out from the gator crawl and look at this article from The Bay Buzz:



Auditor slams Hillsborough housing office#comments

Here are a few snips from the 104 page report:

misplaced trust in unproductive and inept management;

a defective reporting system preventing executive awareness;

no transparency or accountability fostered by an ineffectual performance management
system;
3

heavy reliance on limited and perfunctory oversight by the grantor/regulatory agencies;

poor planning and execution; and

a lack of formal policies and procedures

and then there were these:

Action plans appeared to be “shelfware,” and were not executed as approved or amended
to account for unanticipated changes or the need for modifications.

According to the County Administrator, she was unaware that the housing assistance program
was in disrepair, the extent of poor performance during the 2004 to 2006 timeframe, or that the
loss of funds announced in 2007 was a possibility until it was too late for her to take corrective
action. It was not until funds were lost that she realized, questioned, and critiqued the
performance of the housing agency. The County Administrator now recognizes the need for
affirmative, constructive and remedial actions and has taken positive steps in that directionl.

As we discovered during the initial stages of the audit, the agency does not have a bona fide
performance management system in place that, among other requirements, gathers and tracks
performance data. This severely limited our ability to assess the agency’s performance. In order
to accomplish this audit objective we would have had to construct our own performance
framework and data, a sizeable task requiring thousands of staff hours. This issue is discussed
in this report and will be the subject of future audits.

In February 2008, County Administration’s Consumer Protection and Professional Responsibility
Agency (CPPRA) initiated an investigation into allegations made about AHO employees. In May
2008, the County Administrator discussed the results of the CPPRA investigation with the US Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the HUD Inspector General, and an
external criminal investigation by those agencies began. The Tampa Tribune subsequently
issued a newspaper story relating to the investigation and naming the suspected employees.