The Morning Report
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Mayor Jerry Sanders’ top administrator announced that the city will reopen the 2005 financial audit it closed last month in order to accommodate the demands of City Attorney Mike Aguirre and Councilwoman Donna Frye.
Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone said the city will amend the section of the document dealing with employees whose future pension checks would exceed a dollar limit imposed by the Internal Revenue Service. The city established a second fund to collect money that would pay for the overages, pointing to other public retirement funds that employ a similar practice as examples.
Aguirre and Frye have been vocal in their concerns of the arrangement, predicting that the city’s pension system could lose its tax-exempt practice as a result. By not disclosing that risk in the city’s financial documents, the city was risking another financial reporting scandal, they said.
Without mentioning Aguirre or Frye, Goldstone said in a memo yesterday that the purpose of clarifying the issue was to “err on the side of conservatism.” However, he said that his office and the outside auditor thought the issue was “immaterial.”