Thursday evening at 7 p.m. will be the monthly Champaign County Board meeting where our elected officials will find ways to spend sums of money most of us only dream of having. This month's highlight, Resolution 6186 transferring $400,000 to the Champaign County Nursing Home to cover payments to outside staffing agencies.
When will someone on this board stand up and say "enough is enough" with this money pit?
The rest of the agenda is quite mundane.
John,
This is a transfer within the nursing home's budget line items...no cash is being transferred from the county to the nursing home. Guess that makes the entire agenda for the night mundane. Gotta hand it to Tony Fabri for fooling the local news media into giving him big-time publicity for blowing the whistle on basically nothing.
Scott
Gotta hand it to Scott Tapley to justify wasting taxpayer dollars just to stick it to Tony Fabri.
John,
You are beginning to sound like Tony Fabri's campaign manager. Study the facts harder.
I appreciate John's post and expect nothing different from Scott. He claims to be the taxpayer's best friend, but he will sell them out defending an ineffective administrator just to score points attacking Tony Fabri. Some friend!
Scott, thanks for the clarification.
I still think its time to get out of the Nursing Home business.
I just heard a correct report on the $400,000 nursing home transfer on WDWS. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: Channel 3 running this story yesterday without making any effort to check facts, or our current County Auditor not having a clue how county finances actually work.
Let's hear from all the Dems who posted on this site after Fabri's appointment that his lack of financial training would not have any adverse impact on his ability to perform his duites. Fabri should be embarassed for contriving a fake scandal just to get on the news, and Channel 3 should be more embarassed for swallowing it.
I'm confused. This was a blog post by John Farney, with a link to the agenda. How is this Tony Fabri's fault?
I think the complaint about Fabri is related to this story on WCIA:
I think this is what they're referring to:
How did Fabri vote on such transfers when he was a CB member?
beat you by a matter of seconds, IP :-)
Well done, my friend.
:-)
I agree, John, that it would be good for the county to get out of the nursing home business, but that's not going to happen any time soon. The next best thing is allowing it to operate with as close to a real business model as possible, which might allow it to be more nimble, proactive and forward-looking (and operate at a profit like the only county-owned nursing home that's profitable in Illinois, DeKalb County, which has a separate governing board like the one currently being proposed for CCNH).
Ironically, the inertia that inevitably inhibits efficient management of CCNH may be the force that prevents the county board from moving forward with a new governinig board.
For educational purposes, a budget amendment increases the total amount being spent or received during the fiscal year, but a transfer merely moves expenditures or revenue from one line item to another (i.e., it has no effect on the total amount received/spent and therefore no impact on deficits/surpluses). Due to being unable to hire enough full-time staff, expenditures are being transferred from the line item that would normally be used to pay employees to the line item that pays for contract nurses (who are hired when you're short-staffed).
There's no impact on the Champaign County General Corporate fund whatsoever from any internal budget transfer at CCNH, whether it's for contract nurses or toilet paper. But it's probably good politics for Tony to talk about this issue because no one outside of county government understands what's going on well enough to know that he doesn't understand the difference between a transfer within and an amendment to the budget.
Fabri has apparently learned well from his predecessor--the truth doesn't really matter as long as the issue is confusing enough that people don't know what to believe. (Remember the county's under-funded pension that Greg Knott and I warned everyone that the stock market losses that had already occurred would flow through the county's financial statements over the next several years due to a lag in pension accounting? Parr and Frerichs ignored those warnings and then acted surprised about the under-funded pension status claiming they couldn't predict that the stock market would decline when the real issue was that 1) the two didn't understand how pension accounting would hide the losses that had already occurred for a couple of years and 2) the early retirement incentive proposal Frerichs floated would greatly exacerbate the under-funded status. The county eventually issued $2 million in bonds to fully fund the ERI pension obligation, but Frerichs succeeded in selling the News-Gazette on his confused perspective--in their endorsement of Frerichs, the N-G excused his mis-guided ERI proposal due to inability to predict market declines despite the fact that the ERI was proposed after the market had already bottomed).
It's too bad politicians are so drawn to making up stuff that makes other people look bad just to try to make themselves look good.
I agree that it is too bad that politicians resort to distortions to make themselves look better. If you want to learn from them you need look no further than Scott Tapley. His last post is full of distortions and revisionist history. Scott created the nonissue of Frerichs' ERI bancrupting the pension system to help Brad Jones, and he is still mad that no one bought it. Not the News Gazette, not the County Board, not IMRF, not the voters. It was not Frerichs' plan and it didn't bancrupt the system, but facts never seem to get in the way of Scott.
Now he is trying to deny a real issue (the nursing home administrator's actions are causing high turnover, causing increased costs through the need for contract nursing) to help out his lapdog Brad Jones and push forward his agenda of dismantling the nursing home.
The nursing home has real problems retaining staff and that is costing the count money. Rather than deal with that problem at the County Board Scott's answer is to punt to an unaccountable board. How did that kind of oversight work for the CUPHD?
"...Scott created the nonissue of Frerichs' ERI bancrupting the pension system to help Brad Jones, and he is still mad that no one bought it. Not the News Gazette, not the County Board, not IMRF, not the voters. It was not Frerichs' plan and it didn't bancrupt the system, but facts never seem to get in the way of Scott."
Anonymous, you can look up county IMRF records--they're public. The county's pension status went from $9 mln over-funded to about $3 mln under-funded, just as predicted (not really a prediction, just an understanding of how pension accounting works). The N-G didn't understand it, but IMRF did (I called and asked them if they thought implementing an ERI was a smart move when the pension's funded status was turning negative, and they said "no," but they they don't like to get involved in politics so they refused to say so publicly). The County Board eventually "bought it" because they voted to sell bonds to eliminate the under-funded status (surely you don't believe the county issued $2+ mln in bonds for a problem Scott Tapley merely imagined). Contrary to your attempt at revisionist history, the ERI was Frerichs' plan (listen to the tape of the first county board meeting when Frerichs even invited union members to listen to him touting the ERI benefit), until he realized that I was right about the impending funded status trainwreck and then started calling it the county board's plan.
No one denies that reducing the use of contract nursing should be a high priority, but that's not the issue Fabri raised about the budget transfer. Champaign County should consider itself fortunate to have Mr. Buffenbarger running CCNH, as he is on track to operate it in the black next year after inheriting an out-of-control mess. By the way, no one has an "agenda of dismantle the nursing home."
The governing structure being proposed for CCNH has the potential to provide better oversight and more accountability for the nursing home than the county board members with no healthcare expertise are capable of providing. Major decisions would still have to be approved by the county board, and the CCNH governing board could be scrapped at any time, so the fear-mongers who are defending the status quo (which is the root of the inertia that has been one of the major causes of the chronic deficits at the nursing home) are just imagining bogeymen. For what it's worth, the unions in DeKalb County initially were skeptical/fearful of the new governing structure for their nursing home, but they came around to the realization that a home operating in the black and growing bodes better for employee raises and job security than a nursing home that is running chronic deficits and is in danger of going bankrupt.
Any comparison of CCNH to CUPHD is too absurd to bother discussing.
Gee, thanks for your comments Tony. Don't you have something to audit instead of ranting on this website?
Scott presents a case study in how to distract and deceive. Let's break it down for all to understand.
First throw out some numbers without proper context. Positive 9 million to negative 3 sounds awful. Don't tell them that that information was provided. Also don't give them the full context for the decision. The board knew that they would be increasing their IMRF liability, but they intended to reduce headcount, thus saving money in the general revenue fund. If the Board didn't reduce headcount and hired new people at high salaries, then that is the board's fault, not the Auditor's.
Also, you should quote anonymous sources and give reasons why you can't get this information from them. IMRF wouldn't say that it was a bad idea and never did, but trust me, they really wanted to. If you call them and they won't confirm this it is because they won't get involved in politics. With this arguement you can say anything and no one can contradict you.
You should also point to some public "proof" that you know no one will bother to check. Ask them to go listen to tapes in the county clerks office and you know they won't take you up on it. Then you can say whatever you want. Fortunately, as a county employee I was there that evening. I don't have to listen to the tapes. The idea was proposed by Deb Busey and Frerichs was asked to present information on it. Not quite the same thing that Scott says, but why let details like that get in the way when you are trying to win an election.
Expect more distortions from Scott in the coming year as he tries to get his friend Brad a job.
I really like how he credits the nursing home administrator, Mr. Buffenbarger, for steering us into the black NEXT year. I thought it was the taxpayers who turned the finances around by building them a new building and giving them an operating subsidy. I also thought it was supposed to be profitable after they moved in. By putting the expected date to be in the black to after the election Scott can dismiss all of Tony's questions without having to explain his own inaction. It's a great political strategy, but I for one am glad someone is asking questions about nursing home practices.
"No one denies that reducing the use of contract nursing should be a high priority, but that's not the issue Fabri raised about the budget transfer."
Actually, Scott, that's exactly the issue Fabri raised about the budget transfer.
In fact, if you look at what Fabri's actually quoted as saying (as opposed to what Tapley says Fabri is saying), you'll see he doesn't talk about budget amendments, the general corporate fund, or any of the other bogus things Tapley is accusing him of misunderstanding:
"Champaign County Auditor Tony Fabri says the county has spent neary $900,000 on agency nurses this year. That's compared to $79,000 in 2003. Fabri says the agency nurses sometimes cost twice as much as county employed help."
"Fabri says in 2001, the county was paying more than $1 million towards contract nurses before cutting those down to less than $100,000. He says these are problems that they tackled once in the past and they should be able to do it again."
Sounds to me like Fabri's saying the Nursing Home once again should make reducing the use of contract nursing a high priority. Scott Tapley says he agrees with that, but still attacks Fabri for saying it. Gosh, is it election season already?
Keep up the good work, Tony (and John)!
I brush my teeth: Awesome!
Tony Fabri brushes his teeth: Worst. Thing. Ever.
Scott, from my years as the group care caseworker at public aid,,,,,,,and also learning from my mom's 20 years of running a nursing home,,,the county has not done the best at recouping assets, and income from all of its residents,,,historically. The simple fact is,most people in the nursing home receive some form of help from public aid, To keep it simple,,,,if a resident has 2000 a month to pay,,,,,and the room rate is 3500 per month,,,,public aid will pay the balance, that is if the resident meets the qualifications,,,I will not get into asset spenddowns,,,or spousal impovishment rules,,,which are tricky, and need a true expert. Anyway, the county was never intended to be a five star hotel,,,,,,,,but over the last 20 years or more it has evolved into "the place to be", as if snobery has a place in an end of life situation,,,,,,,but it doe's. I can tell you with certainty, that many people are getting over on the county nursing home,,,it is a matter of who is who in Champaign County,,,,assets being hidden,,,,,income under reported,,,,,,,and no one wants to rock the boat,,,,it is not as bad as it used to be when the board was controlled by certain GOP members,,,,which is ironic,,,,,a bunch of republicans knocking the welfare state,,,,but it was alright if it involved the assets and money of their own friends and family. The guy you have running it now is pretty good, but he still does not have the backing to really go after the money, He needs someone that knows the system,,,,,and how it works.
Seems clear to me that after the unanimous vote last night, that clearly Mr. Fabri didn't know what he was talking about. He got the "media pop" he wanted out of this and got on TV. The facts don't really matter to Tony as much as making a grand stand approach to leading his office. If he was so concerned with this, why wasn't he at the county budget hearings? Why wasn't he at the finance committee meeting this month so speak. Why as a county board member for years didn't he say anything, or maybe it was because he didn't show up for those meeting either? Channel 3 took this hook line and sinker and essentially had to completely change their story last night so they didn't look more foolish than they already did.
"Why as a county board member for years didn't he say anything"
Excellent question. This isn't a new issue.
"I brush my teeth: Awesome!
Tony Fabri brushes his teeth: Worst. Thing. Ever."
:-)
"Seems clear to me that after the unanimous vote last night, that clearly Mr. Fabri didn't know what he was talking about."
Seems clear to me you clearly don't know what you're talking about, Anon. Clearly. The Channel 3 report quoted Fabri as saying that the Board would have to approve the budget transfer -- it was needed to pay bills for services they'd already used. His point wasn't that the County shouldn't pay its bills, but that they should try to avoid racking up those bills in the future. (And that when he'd been a member of the County Board in the past, they successfully accomplished that.) Who knew he'd take so much heat for encouraging the County Board to try to save money by using less expensive nurses, rather than more expensive nurses?
I brush my teeth: Awesome!
Tony Fabri brushes his teeth: Worst. Thing. Ever.
And I've heard he bathes and uses deodorant too. The scandal!
His point wasn't that the County shouldn't pay its bills, but that they should try to avoid racking up those bills in the future.
(And that when he'd been a member of the County Board in the past, they successfully accomplished that.)
The problem is Mr. Fabri is trying to create an issue where there is none. His obvious lack of understanding of accounting is noticeable, but not unexpected considering he has no background in professional finance. The fact that the vote was bi-partisan and unanimous, again illustrates that Mr. Fabri clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.
If Fabri is serious about looking into county financial rat holes, he should be examining the billings and contracts with Phebus, Duane Morris and the assoicated items with the nursing home litigation. This is where he could help the taxpayers.
The most obvious thing of all is that John "JJ" Farney isn't an insider.
Phyllis Clark might be an insider.
Beckett or Wysocki might be insiders.
Farney isn't an insider, even though he fancies himself in his photo anyway as a junior Rush Limbo.
You republicans are making politcal theater more fun than the democrats ever did.
Thanks.
"...a case study in how to distract and deceive. Let's break it down for all to understand.
First throw out some numbers without proper context. Positive 9 million to negative 3 sounds awful. Don't tell them that that information was provided..." by Scott Tapley--not Mike Frerichs, the county's IMRF agent. It was only after IMRF officials confirmed that Tapley was correct about the county's impending pension deficit that Frerichs stopped referring to the ERI as his idea.
"Also don't give them the full context for the decision. The board knew that they would be increasing their IMRF liability, but they intended to reduce headcount, thus saving money in the general revenue fund. If the Board didn't reduce headcount and hired new people at high salaries, then that is the board's fault, not the Auditor's."
You are correct that the county board is to blame for approving the plan. But why didn't the auditor quantify the savings (or lack of savings) of previous ERI plans so the board could assess the likelihood of saving money this time? Avery and Frerichs did agreed to have a committee calculate the savings of the 2003 ERI but no results were ever presented (probably because the calculation was never done, or, more likely, the results weren't favorable).
"Also, you should quote anonymous sources and give reasons why you can't get this information from them. IMRF wouldn't say that it was a bad idea and never did, but trust me, they really wanted to. If you call them and they won't confirm this it is because they won't get involved in politics. With this arguement you can say anything and no one can contradict you."
Actually, all you have to do is contact IMRF and ask them if it is a good idea, in general, for an entity to enter into an ERI plan when their IMRF liability is under-funded (without asking them to comment specifically on what Champaign County did) and you can get their answer on the idea in principle. Then you can draw your own conclusions about what their opinion might have been about Champaign County doing exactly that a few years ago.
"...Then you can say whatever you want. Fortunately, as a county employee I was there that evening. I don't have to listen to the tapes. The idea was proposed by Deb Busey and Frerichs was asked to present information on it. Not quite the same thing that Scott says, but why let details like that get in the way when you are trying to win an election."
The first meeting at which the ERI was discussed, Frerichs invited the union membership to attend, which they did in sizeable numbers, to hear about his proposed benefit for them. As indicated above, after Tapley asked a series of questions and the IMRF officials confirmed that the county's funded status was deteriorating rapidly (due to the stock market losses that had already occurred, as these ERI discussions were held in 2003, after the market had already declined but the losses hadn't flowed through the financial statements due to the lag caused by pension accounting rules) Frerichs then started referring to the ERI as "not my idea but something the county can do if it wants to."
"I really like how he credits the nursing home administrator, Mr. Buffenbarger, for steering us into the black NEXT year. I thought it was the taxpayers who turned the finances around by building them a new building and giving them an operating subsidy. I also thought it was supposed to be profitable after they moved in. By putting the expected date to be in the black to after the election Scott can dismiss all of Tony's questions without having to explain his own inaction. It's a great political strategy, but I for one am glad someone is asking questions about nursing home practices."
CCNH has been receiving the extra $750,000/year taxpayer subsidy every year since the referendum passed, and it still lost $1.2 million last year. The notion that moving into the new building would wipe out the deficit was ridiculous from the start (the poster I'm responding to here probably was one of the chorus deriding me for suggesting so before the referendum).
I have hardly been guilty of "inaction" as far as CCNH is concerned. I participated in the negotiations for the new labor contract (attended a couple of dozen negotiation sessions) and have therefore probably spent more time on nursing home issues than any county board member other than Brendan McGinty or Jan Anderson.
Like it or not, Andrew Buffenbarger's implementation of that new contract and many of the ideas suggested by the consulting firm the county hired are largely responsible for CCNH's fiscal turnaround. With the old contract and a less talented administrator, there is no question CCNH would still be bleeding big-time--even with the $750,000 subsidy and a new building. Champaign County is extremely fortunate to have Mr. Buffenbarger in its employ at such a critical juncture for CCNH.
"The guy you have running it now is pretty good, but he still does not have the backing to really go after the money, He needs someone that knows the system,,,,,and how it works."
Mr. Buffenbarger is already on track to improve revenues by about $1 million/year, so I think he knows the system pretty darn well. If you really think he could do better than that, call or e-mail me (or better yet, contact Andrew).
Scott,,,,,,,,,,been a long time since our chats on Sheridan Road,,,,,,,,,but you know I do know something about Public Aid and the nursing home business:). Is Andrew prepared to step on the toe's he will need to step on to maximize profits? No one in the past has,,,,,not even that lady that took the rap for union busting attempts:)
I wondered if that was you, Bruce...how have you been?...we should have coffee some time. The short answer to your question is Yes, I think Andrew is doing what needs to be done, but I'm sure both of us would be interested in any constructive suggestions.
Scott, for you I can be constructive:) I will get some notes and info together,,,,,and get in touch:)