My Job
An Auditor's Career Notebook - Part 2
The Office of U.S. Government Comptroller
I received my Bachelors Degree in business administration from the then-College of the Virgin Islands on June 13, 1971 and reported to work as a GS-7
Auditor with the Office of the U.S. Government Comptroller, U.S. Department of the Interior a week later, on June 21, 1971. The Comptroller at the time was
Howard Ross. Several weeks earlier, when I had interviewed for the job, Mr. Ross said that he hoped that one day he could see me sitting in his chair as the
head of the office. Unfortunately, Mr. Ross never lived to see that happen because less than a year later he died needlessly, choking on a piece of meat at a local
restaurant. I clearly remember going in to work on the Monday morning and finding it strange that the office lights were still off and the other staff members
were huddled quietly in the coffee room. I was shocked to hear the news of Mr. Ross's death the night before.
At the time, the Comptroller's Office closely monitored the financial operations of the Government of the Virgin Islands (GVI) in the sense that the Comptroller
had audit teams assigned to review the GVI's revenues and expenditures on a continuous basis. My first assignment was as a member of the expenditure audit
team, working with José Palermo, the office's expenditure expert. Also at that time, the Comptroller's Office had a small permanently-assigned office within
the Department of Finance complex, and José and I would toil away each day, reviewing each and every expenditure voucher processed by the Department of
Finance. We were looking for evidence of: competitive procurement, original vendor invoices, proper authorization of the expenditures, accuracy of accounting
codes, receipt of goods or services, available vendor discounts having been taken, and the absence of duplicate or otherwise improper payments. I worked on
this project for about 6 months before being assigned to an audit of my own. José taught me many of the audit techniques that I carried through my career.
Later on, I also had the opportunity to work with and learn from Elsa O'Bryan, who was the office's revenue expert.
My first solo assignment was to audit the then-Municipal Court of the Virgin Islands. Because the Court had branches on both St. Thomas and St. Croix, this
audit required that I travel to St. Croix to perform audit tests on that island. I traveled there on Antilles Air Boats (affectionately referred to as "the Goose"
because the airline used World War II-era Grumman Goose airboats) at a cost of $21 roundtrip. My second seaplane trip to St. Croix was to the town of
Frederiksted, on the western side of the island. However, Antilles Air Boats didn't have a ramp in that town where the seaplane could run up on dry land for
passengers to deplane. Instead, they took a small boat out to the plane and passengers had to carefully step across from seaplane to boat. But on this occasion,
the water was quite choppy and our seaplane had to taxi around trying to find a calm enough area for us to deplane. Well, after a while we saw shark fins
cutting through the surface near our seaplane. After a few minutes of this, the pilot decided to fly us to the town of Christiansted, where I was able to get a taxi
to Frederiksted. Flying "the Goose" was often a wild ride, and some of our auditors experienced aborted take-offs, engine fires, and other scary situations. But
none of our staff was ever hurt in these incidents. The Goose usually flew without a copilot and, because I was taking flying lessons at the time, I enjoyed the
occasional opportunity to ride in the copilot's seat. By the way, my first audit report, on the Municipal Court, was issued in February 1972.
After Mr. Ross's death in early 1972, Deputy Comptroller Axel Heimer was assigned as Acting Comptroller for about 6 months, until Donald Moysey was
appointed as the new Comptroller. For most of my time at the Comptroller's Office, either Mr. Heimer or Audit Manager Edgar Harthman was my immediate
supervisor, and both greatly helped me to develop my auditing skills.
Mr. Moysey's tenure was the beginning of a dark period for the Comptroller's Office, which led to divisions within the office staff that lingered many, many
years. Auditors in the career ladder (grades GS-5 through GS-12) generally could expect to be promoted each year on the basis of time in grade and satisfactory
performance at their current grade level. However, Mr. Moysey required employees to actually demonstrate that they were capable of performing at the next
higher level before even considering career ladder promotions. Some staff members began to file formal complaints about this practice and eventually formed a
local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) in July 1974. Although I really didn't have any complaints about how I was
treated by Mr. Moysey, I unfortunately allowed myself to be talked into joining the union, even to the extent of being a member of the union team that
negotiated a labor-management agreement with the Department of the Interior in February 1975. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Moysey was replaced as Comptroller
by James Defenbach, a very people-oriented individual who did his best trying to calm the employee dissatisfaction that existed within the office.
By this time, the AFGE local chapter had grown to include all Federal and postal employees in the Virgin Islands. From there, it took on a life of its own and,
at least within the Comptroller's Office, became a disruptive and divisive force. Despite the best efforts of Mr. Defenbach, the union continued its barrage of
labor-management demands and complaints, eventually resulting in him being replaced in 1977 by Darrell Fleming. Like Mr. Defenbach, Mr. Fleming was a
very people-oriented individual, but what developed was a battle of wills between him and the head of the union. Eventually, both departed in 1979 under
clouded circumstances. But what was left behind was a division between two camps in the Comptroller's Office -- one that had been very pro-union and the
other anti-union. After the union was disbanded, these two groups grew into informal cliques composed of friends of two staff members who had been on
opposite sides of the issue. The lingering after-effects of this informal division among the staff existed for many years afterwards, and is one of the things that
I'm most disappointed about in my career because it caused interpersonal tensions and animosities that were totally unnecessary and unhealthy in a small office.
During the height of the "union wars," several auditors from the Comptroller's Office in the Virgin Islands were detailed to a 3-month assignment with the
Comptroller's Office on the Pacific island of Saipan. Because the detailed auditors were union supporters, the obvious assumption was that the detail was a
retaliatory move. The employees filed formal complaints about the details and, if memory serves me, they even hired a lawyer and filed a petition in U.S.
District Court to try to stop the details. But in the end, the Federal Government's right to send its employees to wherever they were needed was upheld and the
employees had to serve their 3-month assignment on Saipan. Sometime later, the need again arose for an audit team to be sent on a 3-month detail to Saipan,
but this time several different auditors volunteered for the assignment.
Backtracking a bit, during Mr. Moysey's tenure as Comptroller there were two rather humorous work-related events that I can recall. First, one day Mr. Moysey
was stuck in traffic for over an hour on his way to work, primarily because of a major road construction project that was underway on a stretch of Veterans
Drive between the western side of Charlotte Amalie and the Crown Bay area.(1) Upon arriving at the office later that morning, Mr. Moysey assigned me to audit
the construction project. As it turned out, the traffic congestion had been made worse by poor planning on the part of the V.I. Department of Public Works,
which simultaneously had another construction project ongoing on Harwood Highway, the only other major thoroughfare between Charlotte Amalie and Crown
Bay. Having both roads under construction at the same time caused some horrific traffic jams that stretched for miles. During the audit, I had my flight
instructor take me up in the flying school's plane to take aerial pictures of the traffic congestion caused by the double road projects. Those pictures were used
prominently in the resulting audit report. But when the report was issued and reported on in the local press, the next day the newspaper headlines read:
"Governor to Comptroller: Mind Your Own Business!" Governor Melvin Evans was not pleased by the Comptroller's Office "meddling" in what he felt
were purely local matters.
The other incident involved two young auditors who were hired by Mr. Moysey. They were very nice guys and, when they wanted to be, they were also very
good auditors. But in essence, they were long-haired "hippies" who were probably on St. Thomas more for the beaches than for the work experience. They
certainly weren't the type of persons one would have expected the conservative Mr. Moysey to hire. Well, they shared a small office and one day had the door
to their office closed, which was rather unusual. Mr. Moysey wanted to talk with one of them, so he went to their office and opened the door . . . just as one of
them used a rubber band to fire a paperclip at a target they had taped to the wall. Needless to say, they were sternly admonished for such activity and everyone
was directed to maintain an "open door" policy from that point forward. One of the two later earned his CPA certification and was last seen on Wall Street,
clean-shaven and wearing a 3-piece suit.
A much more memorable and personal event also took place during Mr. Moysey's tenure. During an audit at the General Ledger Section of the V.I. Department
of Finance, I met a pretty, young accountant named Helena, who had recently started to work there. After working up the courage, I asked her out to dinner and,
one year and one day later, on June 15, 1974, we were married. After our daughter, Selene, was born in August 1977, Helena retired to her new and preferred
role as mother and housewife. By that time, I had progressed through the auditor career ladder and had been at the GS-12 Auditor position for almost 4 years.
In October 1977, then-Comptroller Darrell Fleming selected me for a competitive merit promotion to the GS-13 Auditor-in-Charge position.
1977 - The staff of the Government Comptroller's Office with Director
of Territorial and Insular Affairs
Ruth Van Cleve and Comptroller Darrell Fleming
During the 1970s, I also earned the first of my professional certifications. Two other Comptroller's Office auditors and I were candidates for the Certified
Public Accountant (CPA) exam, and we were tutored after working hours by two senior auditors who were already CPAs. It took three attempts, but I finally
passed the CPA exam in November 1974 and received my CPA certificate from the V.I. Board of Public Accountancy in February 1975. Soon after, I joined
the American Institute of CPAs and the V.I. Society of CPAs. A few years later, I started taking night classes at the now-University of the Virgin Islands and
eventually earned a masters degree in business administration in June 1980 with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. My 160-page masters thesis was titled "An
Economic and Comparative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Industrial Development Efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands." By this time, I was also an active
member of the local chapter of the Association of Government Accountants (AGA), serving as the Chapter President in 1988 and as the Education Chairman
and Chapter Newsletter Editor from the early 1980s until the chapter died out after 1995's devastating Hurricane Marilyn struck the islands. During the
mid-1980s, I also served as a member of AGA's National Education Committee and had the opportunity to travel stateside to participate in meetings with other
committee members from around the country to formulate educational programs for the national AGA organization. During the time that I was a Systems
Accountant with the Office of Technical Assistance (more on this later), I was also a member of the Government Finance Officers Association. Later, while at
the Office of Inspector General (also more on this later), I earned certification as a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) from the Association of CFEs in 1993 and
as a Certified Government Financial Manager (CGFM) from the AGA in 1994.
During my time with the Comptroller's Office, I was often assigned to special projects that came up from time to time. One such project involved working with
a senior internal revenue agent at the V.I. Bureau of Internal Revenue, to compute the negative impact of a recent Federal income tax reduction law on income
tax collections in the Virgin Islands. Another project had me on the island of St. Croix for a couple months (coming home on weekends) researching historical
records at the Cruzan Rum and Brugal Rum distilleries to support a claim that the Virgin Islands had been underpaid by the Federal Government for rebates of
excise taxes paid on Virgin Islands rum shipped into the United States. Another project, which became an annual assignment, was to review financial records
at a number of watch assembly factories in the Virgin Islands to support their applications for permits to ship the completed watches duty-free into the United
States. At the time, there were about a dozen watch assembly factories on St. Thomas and St. Croix combined, and seeing the watch assembly process and the
changes in watch technology over the years was really quite interesting.
There was also a period of about a year during which I was assigned to write audit reports based on the audit work performed by other staff auditors. In those
cases, I had to carefully review the audit workpapers to extract the important details needed to develop the audit findings and recommendations. Perhaps the
most interesting of these writing assignments was for an audit of the finances of the "Miss Twins USA" beauty pageant, which was co-sponsored by the V.I.
Department of Commerce (now the Department of Tourism) and held at the now-demolished Virgin Isle Hilton Hotel. I had the opportunity to be in the
audience to witness the actual beauty pageant, which included contestants from across the United States. The last project I worked on for the Comptroller's
Office was a special report to the Secretary of the Interior and the U.S. Congress on the GVI's financial condition. The 42-page report contained detailed
analyses of the revenues, expenditures, and long-term debt of the GVI, along with background information on the GVI's Industrial Development Program and
semi-autonomous agencies. Looking back now at a copy of the report, I notice that the many charts and graphs in the report were all hand-drawn -- personal
computers and graphing software were still several years away.
Around 1978, the Comptroller's Office moved from the former Navy barracks building in Crown Bay to brand new office space in the just-constructed Federal
Building and Courthouse on the eastern side of Charlotte Amalie. By the following year, after Mr. Fleming had departed the position of Comptroller as a result
of the "union wars," Bill Caton, an Audit Manager within the office, was named to the position of Comptroller. Unfortunately, this was another time of ill-will
among various office staff members because of Mr. Caton's somewhat "workaholic" tendencies. He and a group of new auditors he had hired were accustomed
of working late into the evenings and even coming in on weekends. The "old timers" within the office, including myself, were often pressured to do likewise.
My first-year mentor, José, became so disgusted with the constant criticism that he opted for early retirement and went to work for what would later become the
Office of the Virgin Islands Inspector General. In my case, I firmly refused to put in extra (unpaid) hours because I was able to meet my project deadlines
without having to work evenings and weekends and, besides, that would have meant neglecting my wife and daughter at home. Under the relentless pressure
and criticism, I requested a transfer to the Office of Technical Assistance of the then-Office of Territorial and International Affairs (OTIA - now the Office of
Insular Affairs). I was temporarily detailed to the Office of Technical Assistance around October 1979 and was officially transferred as a GS-13 Systems
Accountant in January 1981. I had been an auditor with the Office of U.S. Government Comptroller for almost 10 years.
__________
1. At the time, the Comptroller's Office was located on the second floor of the V.I. Department of Property and Procurement building in Crown Bay. During and after World War II, this
building served as a barracks for U.S. Navy personnel who were stationed on St. Thomas. To this day, the Crown Bay area of St. Thomas is often referred to as "Sub Base."
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