It is not clear what route last month’s warning letter from the state Attorney General took when it reached the Culver City High School Booster Club.
Evidently it was not an alarm-bell priority.
The club president said yesterday he would have to search for it – shortly before contacting Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris’s office to assure the demanded conditions had been met.
The accountant who filed three years’ worth of belated tax returns told a reporter he had just seen the 400-word revocation-threat message, dated Nov. 19, just five minutes before. He said the letter was “confusing and ambiguous.”
While the present slate of officers, in charge since July 1, 2013, is held blameless by the state, appearances suggest communication has not improved since the previous regime.
Still another current officer asked “what letter?”
“How do you have the letter and I don’t?” the person wanted to know.
“We took over a mess,” the person said later in a moment of candor. “The bookkeeping methods did not follow general accounting practices. The club needed a little more guidance with respect to accountability to the public.
“We would sit at meetings and ask, ‘How much money do we have?’”
Affecting the most casual of voices, the person said ‘Oh, about a hundred and twenty grand’ we were told. I said ‘Tell us how much we have, not ‘about.’
“By now our books are open. Our books are actually kept in a way that any member, anyone from the general public, can get a copy of anything.”
Given the perceived imprecision of attitude, “it would not surprise me if (the previous officers) did not fill out all the forms they should have.
“The public has to know where every dollar goes.”
