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Making waves in Oakland Principal Dean Madsen of our San Francisco office narrowly missed being elected City Auditor of Oakland, California in a special runoff election May 15 against the incumbent City Auditor. Dean garnered 48 percent of the vote in the runoff election, up substantially from the 32 percent figure in the election April 14, but not quite enough to give Oakland the new blood and new thinking that Dean feels is needed in the city's government. "It was a good campaign," says Dean. "We got a lot of people thinking about an office that has not been distinguished in the public mind!' Dean's active participation in politics in the City of Oakland began in 1971. Annoyed that the city's annual financial statements had been issued anywhere from one and a half to three and a half years late, Dean reviewed whatever financial statements he could get his hands on and wrote a series of articles on deficiencies in the city's financial administration for a local newspaper, The Montclarian. One of the things Dean had turned up in his review was that the city had accumulated $20 million in excess funds and the public knew nothing about it because of the delays in issuing financial reports. As fortune would have it, the night before Dean's article was to appear in the newspaper, Oakland's mayor, speaking before a group of businessmen, announced that the city was broke. The next issue of The Montclarian ran both stories on the front page. At the top, Dean's article under the headline: "$20 Million in Treasury," countered below by another headline: "... But the Mayor Says We're Broke." At a press conference on the steps of City Hall late in December, Dean announced that he would challenge the City Auditor in the forthcoming election. He stated that as City Auditor he would "question outdated procedures and the management decisions behind the spending of taxpayers' funds" and would "emphasize the establishment of strong managerial controls over all levels of city operations." Time and funds are necessary ingredients for any political campaign. Although finding the time is a particularly difficult problem for an accountant during the busy season, Dean was able to work in campaign talks before eighteen service clubs as well as appear at "about eighty or ninety" coffee klatches, dinners and candidates nights sponsored by schools, unions, and various community groups during the four and a half month period. All in all, Dean estimates that his campaign budget was around seventeen thousand dollars. "About two thousand of this)' says Dean, "came from contributions from partners, principals and staff of the San Francisco office, and I'm deeply appreciative of their support and encouragement:' With the arduous campaign and the pressures of two elections behind him, Dean Madsen is looking ahead. "I find there is both a need and an opportunity for involvement of CPAs in the affairs of local government, and I expect to remain involved in Oakland politics, especially in the critical analysis of the city's financial administration!' • Carolina tax corps For principal Bill Convey and five staff accountants in the Charlotte office, the tax season took on new dimensions this year in the interest of low income individuals from minority groups in the area. Bill has been serving as chairman of the Minority Aid Committees of the North Carolina Society of CPAs and of the Charlotte chapter of NCSCPAs for some time. Last fall, when the chairman of the Charlotte chapter's I ncome Tax Aid Committee resigned, Bill took that job on himself and set out to find volunteers to man the neighborhood tax centers on Saturday afternoons for the two months between February 17 and April 14, to help prepare individual tax returns. The first place to look was within H&S, and Bill says, "The guys were just great. Like most CPA firms this year, we had just about all the tax work we could handle, and yet five of our people volunteered to spend from one to three weeks working with the Tax Aid Program on their own time." In addition to Bill Convey, the H&S people included Ken Burdette, John Garrity, Dave Burke, Eddie McAbee, all from the audit staff, and Larry Gies, the lone tax specialist in the group. Six additional volunteers came from the offices of two of the other "Big Eight" accounting firms in Charlotte and thirty-seven college students also helped out. "We had nineteen students from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte," says Bill. "They were a great help. We would have been in a real bind without them. We also had help from sixteen students from Johnson C. Smith University, a university here in Charlotte with a predominantly black student body, and two students from Davidson College." The Tax Aid Program was in operation at two neighborhood centers for two weeks each, then at a single center for nine weeks. In addition, on two weekday nights Bill Convey personally took his services to the Charlotte Advancement Center to provide tax help to prisoners there on work release time from the North Carolina Department of Correction. All in all, Bill and the other tax aid volunteers gave 275 hours of their time and talent to the program, preparing 400 returns on which there was a total of $29,000 in tax refunds. Bill was able to work with the program for all but two weeks during the two-month period of operation. But even during that time the returns were delivered to him for review, so that all 400 of them passed through his hands. For Bill Convey, the other H&S volunteers and the rest, the tax season in Charlotte was particularly hectic this year but, as Bill puts it, "the extra hours we put in were for a very worthy cause." •
Object Description
Title |
H&S scene |
Author |
Anonymous |
Subject |
Macmillan, Inc |
Personal Name |
Madsen, Dean Convey, William H. Hagel, Raymond C. Testone, John A. Kast, C. Howard McMahon, Gary F. Curtin, Charles |
Office/Department |
Haskins & Sells. San Francisco Office Haskins & Sells. Charlotte Office Haskins & Sells. Syracuse Office Haskins & Sells. Denver Office Haskins & Sells. Merrimack Valley Office |
Abstract | Illustrations not included in the Web version. |
Citation |
H&S Reports, Vol. 10, (1973 summer), p. 26-29 |
Date-Issued | 1973 |
Source | Originally published by: Haskins & Sells |
Rights | Copyright and permission to republish held by: Deloitte |
Type | Text |
Format | PDF page image with corrected OCR scanned at 400 dpi |
Collection | Deloitte Digital Collection |
Digital Publisher | University of Mississippi Library. Accounting Collection |
Date-Digitally Created | 2010 |
Language | eng |
Identifier | HSReports_1973_Summer-p26-29e |