I hope you're right that they'll swear him in soon, and allow him to do whatever job he's legally supposed to do. (And yes, I hope he lets the CPA do the job they were hired for, to the extent the law allows them to do it and to the extent they're behaving ethically themselves.)
Honestly I do think the elected auditor (calling him "this dude" is a needlessly demeaning moniker) is operating in good faith - the CPA will still be allowed to do what they're supposed to do, but state law puts certain responsibilities in the hands of the elected official even when a CPA is hired.
I strongly presume that no ethical CPA would want to fulfill duties that legally aren't theirs to fulfill, so either the town is giving inaccurate instructions to the CPA firm which isn't investigating well enough to learn the true legal limits of their duties, or nobody is fulfilling those duties which are statutorily reserved to the elected officials, or the CPA is knowingly exceeding their authorized duties. I can't tell which is true but none of these possibilities are good.
By contrast, since the same thing happened two years prior with the other guy who was elected then, I think the city admins are either negligent in not having the correct answer from that interaction ready for prompt application this time or not acting in good faith themselves. Again, I can't tell which is true but neither of these possibilities is good.
> Honestly I do think the elected auditor (calling him "this dude" is a needlessly demeaning moniker) is operating in good faith
I disagree. I think he went into local government looking for a fight.
>I strongly presume that no ethical CPA would want to fulfill duties that legally aren't theirs to fulfill
The supervisors are fully within their rights re: the external firm.
> By contrast, since the same thing happened two years prior with the other guy who was elected then, I think the city admins are either negligent in not having the correct answer from that interaction ready for prompt application this time or not acting in good faith themselves. Again, I can't tell which is true but neither of these possibilities is good.
Yes, the city admins of a 17K person township misinterpreted an arcane piece of law. Also, they were idiotic for assuming that the fact that he has no real responsibilities means it's NBD to not swear him in.
All of that is granted.
The reasonable resolution to this case would have been for him to reply-all to the original email and insist on being sworn in anyways. I have a suspicion that this didn't happen, and that this guy is making a big deal over nothing for the sake of a social media following.
Welcome to Idiocracy, where instead of competent CPAs doing boring work we get twitter threads about a game of telephone between a bunch of part-time employees.
Honestly I do think the elected auditor (calling him "this dude" is a needlessly demeaning moniker) is operating in good faith - the CPA will still be allowed to do what they're supposed to do, but state law puts certain responsibilities in the hands of the elected official even when a CPA is hired.
I strongly presume that no ethical CPA would want to fulfill duties that legally aren't theirs to fulfill, so either the town is giving inaccurate instructions to the CPA firm which isn't investigating well enough to learn the true legal limits of their duties, or nobody is fulfilling those duties which are statutorily reserved to the elected officials, or the CPA is knowingly exceeding their authorized duties. I can't tell which is true but none of these possibilities are good.
By contrast, since the same thing happened two years prior with the other guy who was elected then, I think the city admins are either negligent in not having the correct answer from that interaction ready for prompt application this time or not acting in good faith themselves. Again, I can't tell which is true but neither of these possibilities is good.