Results vs. Grandstanding
Rebecca puts her nose to the grindstone and focuses on producing results, while her opponent favors grandstanding in the media.
Results
Rebecca: tough, friendly, and three times as productive
Rebecca has conducted nearly three times as many investigations as her opponent, former State Auditor Pat Anderson - and when Rebecca gets tough, she has come through in a big way, and people have been sentenced to time for misusing public funds.
A review of the Office of the State Auditor's Web site shows that during the years 2003-2006, when Anderson was State Auditor, there were a total of ten investigations. The years 2007-2010, Rebecca Otto’s first term, shows more than thirty.
Pat Anderson says that Rebecca Otto had State Auditor staff remove "hundreds" of investigations. But a review of the Internet Archive for Pat Anderson's term shows this is false.
Anderson filed suit to try to supress the information, and the GOP made a data practices request for the Office of the State Auditor's department of Legal/Special Investigations work product, but when the numbers were tallied they showed Rebecca has in fact opened about four times as many files as Anderson did during her entire term.
Rebecca Otto has been dramatically more productive than Pat Anderson, who focused on press conferences.
A short list of Rebecca Otto's results:
- Cut her own funds by $1 million and gave the money to the legislature to put toward the budget deficit
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Nearly three times as many investigations as her predecessor
- Earned the prestigious National Excellence in Accountability Award from her peers in the nonpartisan National State Auditor Association
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Earned the Distinguished Service Award from the Minnesota State Fire Chiefs Association for revamping fire laws that hadn't been reviewed in 30 years.
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Elected by her nonpartisan peers to lead the National State Auditors Association on its executive committee, and to become the national president in four years, making Minnesota a national leader in excellent and efficient government
- Chaired the Human Resources Committee of the National State Auditors Association, helping address staffing issues in State Auditors offices across the nation in tight times
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Created a new Web site that makes taxpayer dollars much more transparent and saves immense amounts of staff time
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Helped create and chairs the newly-formed Collaborative Governance Council which focuses on making government at all levels more efficient
- Convened and serves on the Council of Local Results and Innovation
- Chairs the Investment Study Group which is examining penions in the State of Minnesota
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Eliminated a Deputy State Auditor position occupied by now-GOP party chair Tony Sutton - saving a third of a million dollars over her first term. Sutton was double dipping, making $85,000 a year from the taxpayers of Minnesota at the same time that he was making $42,000 a year working as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Republican party. Sutton was in charge of the State Auditor division that issued overly partian reports and made hundreds of millions of dollars in financial errors
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Greatly improved the quality, accuracy and neutrality of financial reports coming out of the Office, and removed partisan "activist" language Anderson and Sutton had inserted. Compare reports from now and then yourself.
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Implemented new security procedures to protect Minnesotans' nonpublic data from the kind of theft that had occured under Anderson
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Implemented new, tougher national auditing standards
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Implemented online trainings and meetings to drastically cut travel costs for her office staff and for local government staff
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Upgraded technology to improve efficiency, accuracy and transparency
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Identified new ways for local governments to improve efficiency, such as collaborative governance and ways to significantly reducing energy costs, which are a major part of local expenses
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Implemented succession and strategic plans for the Office
Grandstanding
The State Auditor is there to oversee taxpayer dollars - not to push an activist agenda
Pat Anderson describes herself as an "active" State Auditor. This activism showed in many ways.
When she announced her run, Anderson proudly pointed to press clippings from her term, counting her success by the number of press conferences she held, instead of by actual work product or new efficiencies.
She hired current Republican Party chair Tony Sutton as Deputy State Auditor in charge of Government Information and paid him $85,000 a year at the same time that he was also serving as the paid Secretary/Treasurer of the Republican Party (conveniently on the second floor of the same building,) and he gave official State Auditor reports an activist partisan spin. Errors in the numbers followed.
Anderson used the official reports of the Office to push a partisan agenda, something Rebecca has not done. Rebecca will campaign for office, but will never twist the office's official reports to push a partisan agenda, and has several staff review them for accuracy and impartiality before publication.
State Auditors usually serve multiple terms. Voters repudiated Anderson's partisan approach with the largest defeat of an incumbent State Auditor in 112 years - since 1894. The system works!
Anderson spent a lot of her time in office out of the office, traveling around and talking to the media about her activist political agenda.
In fact, the day after a serious security breach under her watch exposed Minnesotans' social security numbers, Anderson was traveling and talking to the media about her activist political agenda, rather than dealing with the emergency.
Anderson says the relationship between state and local governments is "broken," and doesn't realize that it was she herself that helped break it. She describes the office as a "bully pulpit" from which to espouse her activist views - often in bullying terms:
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Advocating for steep cuts in Local Government Aid in an official State Auditor report that drove up property taxes
- Issuing other activist, partisan official financial reports from the Office
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Deeming city services such as parks, libraries, and community health "non-essential"
- Lying in wait to ambush local officials in the press and grandstand in the press for her own political gain
But we don't need an activist, grandstanding bully in the State Auditor's office. We need a leader who produces clear, measurable results. Rebecca Otto.