Petrelis Files

2004 Audit of Tomlinson, BBG; No Minutes of BBG Meetings

Stephen Labaton
slabaton@nytimes.com
The New York Times

Dear Mr. Labaton:

I was thoroughly fascinated by your front page article in today's New York Times about the inquiry by the State Department's Inspector General into accusations of improper use of federal funds and other possible misdeeds by Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

After reading your story, I searched the BBG's web site, looking for minutes of all the public meetings held by the board. To my dismay, no minutes or transcripts of these meetings were available.

This lack of minutes led me to search the web for any Federal Register announcements from the BBG about their public meetings. I found lots of announcements, but every single one stated the BBG meetings would be held in closed session.

"The members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) will meet in closed session to review and discuss a number of issues relating to U.S. Government-funded non-military international broadcasting. The will address internal procedural, budgetary, and personnel issues, as well as sensitive foreign policy issues relating to potential options in the U.S. international broadcasting field. This meeting is closed because if open it likely would either disclose matters that would be properly classified to be kept secret in the interest of foreign policy under the appropriate executive order (5 U.S.C. 552b. (c)(1)) or would disclose information the premature disclosure of which would be likely to significantly frustrate implementation of a proposed agency action.

Here are eleven listings for BBG meetings, stretching back to 2002, where the public was kept out: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

Last and certainly not least, I'm sure you're aware of the most recent independent audit of the Broadcasting Board of Governors for FY 2004.

Among the audit's major findings, these were of particular interest to me:

- Inadequacies in internal control;

- Instances of noncompliance with selected provisions of applicable laws and regulations involving BBG's financial management system;

- BBG's internal control over its finances and accounting system was inadequate;

- Certain elements of the financial statements, principally property, plant and equipment, are developed from sources other than the general ledger;

- The use of sources other than the general ledger to generate elements of the financial statements increases the potential for omission of significant transactions;

- BBG has not codified its financial management operating procedures;

- Overall, BBG did not comply with a number of laws and regulations, including the Budget and Accounting Procedures Act of 1950, which requires an accounting system to provide full disclosure of the results of financial operations;

- BBG financial systems did not issue interim financial reports that could be used for effective management operations. (Audit link, pages 39 - 48.)

These troubling findings from a year ago, fit into the larger context of what you reported in the Times:

"Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the head of the federal agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, is the subject of an inquiry into accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees, officials involved in that examination said on Friday."

Having examined the 2004 audit of Tomlinson's fiscal leadership of the BBG, I do wonder if the investigation you wrote about is part of what may be a longstanding problem with his accounting and spending programs.

You might want to look at the audit and lack of publicly available minutes from BBG meetings, and include some the information in a story for the Times.

Regards,
Michael Petrelis