Dear Readers,
Yesterday I attended the annual ACFE Holiday Luncheon in Chicago. The guest speaker was Andy Shaw, President & CEO of the Better Government Association (BGA). To give you some background, the BGA is "an independent, nonpartisan government watchdog group that informs and leads citizens in taking responsibility for the quality and effectiveness of their state and local governments". Andy and his team perform intense journalistic investigations to influence government reform.
One of the topics Andy discussed was the amount of governmental units within the state of Illinois. The average amount of governmental units for any given state are, according to Andy, around 3,500. The state of Illinois alone has about 7,000 governmental units. These units levy taxes for which the taxpayer must pay. Many of these units may not spend that money because, simply, there is nothing to spend it on. BGA's role is to investigate these units and determine what the incentives are behind them and whether they are truly necessary.
It was a thoughtful speech and made me question how the BGA will accomplish these "unit cuts" without having the government layoff many of the employees who work for them.
Anyway, check out BGA's website and also take a look around the ACFE Chicago Chapter website (there are a vast amount of interesting fraud links on their resources page).
If you have any questions or comments please email me at sleightfraud @ gmail.com.
Nadine
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