The Auditor's Ledger: A Financial Scandal in Pioneer Seattle

Last week we promised to give our readers an extended review of the published annual reports of our county officials. The more we examine those documents, the more difficult we find this undertaking. The report of the Auditor—the financial and accounting officer—appears like a studied attempt to disguise the actual condition of affairs, but too shallow in device to deceive any who honestly seek information.

In reference to this report, we asked a leading business man of our city, 'If your cashier or book-keeper should make such a report to you of your business transactions, what would you do?' He promptly replied, 'I should discharge him, of course.' Any business man would do the same in his own private affairs; then why will they tolerate a less correct management of public affairs?

Many of our principal tax-payers, it will be observed, have joined in a written request to the Auditor for an explanation of some of the apparent incongruities of his report. The sum total of all county expenditures for the year ending April 30, 1872, is $6,761.10. There is an appropriation of $12 for public printing to a firm that never had any connection with the public printing and no such account was ever presented by their authority. It shows a very loose, if not dishonest, way of appropriating public funds.

If there is anything in these disjointed, loose reports from which any conclusion can be drawn, it is that the affairs of the county have been most loosely and improvidently, if not dishonestly conducted. We postpone further comment, awaiting the response of the Auditor to the request of tax-payers for further information.