Jay Goldstone, the chief financial officer for Mayor Jerry Sanders, offered an explanation about how KPMG’s assurance that the city’s 2003 audit would be certified by Friday evolved into their request to delay the move indefinitely.
On a conference call with local reporters, he detailed a week’s worth of conversations with the outside firm.
As of Monday, the indication was that things were on track.
As of Tuesday night, [KPMG partner Steve DeVetter] wouldn’t give us as direct a response, but did say there were problems.
As of yesterday, there was more waffling – I think because of internal control reviews and their own debate on how to treat issues – that we were getting a pretty clear indication that they were waffling from the original date of Dec. 22.
Then, I had a conversation this morning with Steve DeVetter, and there was no waffling. They said they were not ready to release.
Before the Dec. 22, Sanders had offered a goal of issuing the 2003 audit by Oct. 27, but KPMG sprung a 114-item list of outstanding questions just days before that target date.