Article Contributed on: 10/24/2007 8:19:55 AM
RE: Article on p. 7 of today's
Rocky Mountain News:
"
Community College of Denver audit finds accounting errors"
I think it important that Christine Johnson be made aware that some of us in the community understand the current attempt by the Board and its President to assemble materials and burn her at the stake like a Halloween witch.
In my 25 years of public accounting and many years of suffering through audits by the inspector general of the federal government, I have never seen a more deplorable pursuit. It resembles General Crook chasing Geromino through the desert for 14 years with 5,000 troops.
After spending $320,000 on outside auditing firms, along with internal costs likely as high, Christine Johnson has been charged with immaterial things like allocating expenses to the wrong accounts, allowing students and faculty with less than perfect records into the college and approving two donations to charities.
Give me a break. There isn't a busy executive around who doesn't make such trivial errors.
If you could peel back the psycho-dynamics of the situation I suggest you would find that a personal rift between Johnson and her boss, Nancy McCallin, started all of this. Ms. Johnson, a glamorous, high spirited show horse of an administrator was unsuccessfully controlled by a boss who should have worked as a mule-skinner whip-lashing 20 mule teams across the desert for Borax.
Now McCallin has unleashed junk-yard attack dogs on Johnson.
I have said it once and I will say it again. This is a "
Beauty and the Beast" story. Ms. Johnson should craft a strategy for redemption, like running for Congress and Nancy McCallin should find a therapist.