Dan Edstrom, of DTC Systems, who performs securitization audits, spent a year putting together a diagram that traces the path of his own house's mortgage.
As each side claimed the other was making wild promises that could not be paid for, Lord (Gus) O'Donnell, formerly the most senior civil servant in Whitehall, told Radio 4's World at One the independent Office for Budget Responsibility should audit all spending party plans.
What's more, following a precedent set when Fernando Ferrer aborted a mayoral race to run for re-election as Bronx borough president in 1997, the board would have to audit campaigns' spending thus far to decide what expenses should count toward a Council race, for example, as opposed to a citywide campaign.
The country's Public Accounts Tribunal, which audits spending, is plagued by nepotism.
A January 5 letter by John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) who audits spending in the country, reveals that of 32 such clinics in Kabul province 11 were more than three miles away from coordinates provided by USAID and the Afghan Ministry of Health.
In 1996 and 2011 O'Dwyer criticized PRSA on issues such as financial transparency, auditing and spending in the context of proposed increases in membership dues.
It is telling that a two-person SFI audit team spent only five days inspecting a logging area the size of Pennsylvania and found not a single area for improvement.
A recent audit found Nassau spending $10,207 a year per inmate, or triple the amount spent in adjacent Suffolk.
Why not get the Office for Budget Responsibility to audit both parties' spending commitments rather than just make things up as you go along?
Ms. Lippincott said the system required her children to keep track of their balances and left a neat audit trail of spending.
