H&S scene;

              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he would "question outdated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." •