Days after reaching a separation agreement with Leelanau County, former Leelanau County Administrator Jim Dyer is speaking out after his fiery tenure ends and an uncertain future awaits the Leelanau County administration.
The full interview is scheduled for release in print Thursday and covers the disputed January board vote, the insurance consultant fight at the center of his departure, alleged leaks from the clerk's office, credit card questions swirling around finance staff since he left, and the personal claims against him he calls flat-out lies.
"The board understands they have a problem, and it's in Suite 103," Dyer said, referring to the Leelanau County Clerk’s office.
Dyer says the county spent a decade lowballing its own revenue and ignored its own auditors when they flagged the problem.
"We spent years underestimating our revenues," Dyer said.
He said property taxes came in five to 11 percent over budget for 10 straight years running, which was before Dyer’s time.
"We'd get a notice from the Department of Treasury every year before I got there: you've budgeted under your revenue," Dyer said. "And the response would be, 'we'll just use the fund balance.'"
The response was pointed directly at County Clerk Michelle Crocker among her staff.
Underestimating revenue keeps the real numbers out of the public budget debate, letting officials fall back on fund balance instead of making an accountable decision about what to do with the money, according to Dyer.
In another example, Dyer said the county's former audit firm, Rehmann, had recommended new finance and payroll software; a recommendation he said the county administration ignored outright.
"The auditors, the lawyers, told us we needed new software for payroll," Dyer said. "Everyone ignored the study done by Rehmann, absolutely ignored the recommendations."
Pushing for that software got him the same answer every time, he said.
"It's not broken, don't fix it," Dyer said, describing the pushback he got.
Dyer said Rehmann didn't stick around much longer either. The firm indicated the year before he arrived that it did not want to renew its contract, was talked into one more year, and did not bid on the county's next audit contract.
"They (administration) never planned anything, because they didn't know how."
Check out the full story in print Thursday!
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