Financial woes at Bluegrass 911 resulted from poor management, not wrongdoing, officials say. |
LANCASTER — The Bluegrass 911 Center does not plan to pursue any criminal charges against its former director for the tens of thousands of dollars in debt that accrued under his watch.
“I don’t anticipate now any charges being filed against Ronnie Dobson,” Bluegrass 911 Board Chairman Bill Miracle said Thursday. “From the information we’ve gathered so far on it, I don’t think there was any intentional wrongdoing. ... I just think the management skills weren’t where they should have been.”
Dobson resigned in July 2009, after revealing to Miracle the center owed substantial back taxes and didn’t have the money to pay them. Board members subsequently discovered more than $90,000 in unpaid taxes, bills and retirement fund contributions. The board took out a loan earlier this year to pay off the debt and is currently making monthly $543 payments on that loan.
While the board was sorting through the center’s finances and figuring out how to handle the debt, board members said criminal charges against Dobson were a possibility down the road. The board hired the accounting firm Dulworth, Breeding and Karns to analyze financial records from Dobson’s tenure and figure out what happened.
The board reviewed a draft version of DBK’s findings during an executive session at its January meeting. Garrard County Judge-Executive John Wilson, who serves on the board, said the board has not reviewed any further drafts or final versions of the findings since, but he also confirmed the board is no longer interested in pursuing criminal charges.
Wilson said DBK’s findings showed Dobson did not benefit personally from the mismanagement of 911 funds.
“As a board, we’ve moved on,” he said. “It’s not for us to decide what’s criminal and what’s a violation of criminal law.”
Miracle said many of the “mistakes and errors” made by Dobson occurred prior to the forming of Bluegrass 911, when Dobson was in charge Lincoln’s 911 center. A cover letter from a 2007 audit of the Lincoln County 911 center seems to back that up.
The cover letter documented various financial issues, including incorrectly prepared W-2 tax forms, late tax payments, unpaid retirement contributions and an undocumented, untaxed bonus check that was made out to Dobson. But the cover letter wasn’t discovered until after Dobson had resigned.
Wilson said in August 2009 that he had reviewed the 2007 audit during the merger process, but the cover letter had not been attached.
“The first time anybody had seen that cover letter was after Ronnie (Dobson) had already left,” he said at the time. “I think all of us would like to know exactly why that was.”
Miracle said he believes the center wound up so deep in debt because Dobson spent money on equipment or other expenses when it should have been spent on taxes and bills. Because funding for 911 centers is so tight, it can be easy to wind up short on cash, he said.
Wilson said the board now has bigger fish to fry — like figuring out how to fix 911 funding statewide. Currently, funding is primarily based on fees assessed to landline phone bills. But as more and more customers cancel their landlines in favor of cell phones, less and less money is available for 911 call centers. Something needs to be done at the state level to allow for better funding sources, Wilson said.
“That’s our bigger concern right now.”
“I don’t anticipate now any charges being filed against Ronnie Dobson,” Bluegrass 911 Board Chairman Bill Miracle said Thursday. “From the information we’ve gathered so far on it, I don’t think there was any intentional wrongdoing. ... I just think the management skills weren’t where they should have been.”
Dobson resigned in July 2009, after revealing to Miracle the center owed substantial back taxes and didn’t have the money to pay them. Board members subsequently discovered more than $90,000 in unpaid taxes, bills and retirement fund contributions. The board took out a loan earlier this year to pay off the debt and is currently making monthly $543 payments on that loan.
While the board was sorting through the center’s finances and figuring out how to handle the debt, board members said criminal charges against Dobson were a possibility down the road. The board hired the accounting firm Dulworth, Breeding and Karns to analyze financial records from Dobson’s tenure and figure out what happened.
The board reviewed a draft version of DBK’s findings during an executive session at its January meeting. Garrard County Judge-Executive John Wilson, who serves on the board, said the board has not reviewed any further drafts or final versions of the findings since, but he also confirmed the board is no longer interested in pursuing criminal charges.
Wilson said DBK’s findings showed Dobson did not benefit personally from the mismanagement of 911 funds.
“As a board, we’ve moved on,” he said. “It’s not for us to decide what’s criminal and what’s a violation of criminal law.”
Miracle said many of the “mistakes and errors” made by Dobson occurred prior to the forming of Bluegrass 911, when Dobson was in charge Lincoln’s 911 center. A cover letter from a 2007 audit of the Lincoln County 911 center seems to back that up.
The cover letter documented various financial issues, including incorrectly prepared W-2 tax forms, late tax payments, unpaid retirement contributions and an undocumented, untaxed bonus check that was made out to Dobson. But the cover letter wasn’t discovered until after Dobson had resigned.
Wilson said in August 2009 that he had reviewed the 2007 audit during the merger process, but the cover letter had not been attached.
“The first time anybody had seen that cover letter was after Ronnie (Dobson) had already left,” he said at the time. “I think all of us would like to know exactly why that was.”
Miracle said he believes the center wound up so deep in debt because Dobson spent money on equipment or other expenses when it should have been spent on taxes and bills. Because funding for 911 centers is so tight, it can be easy to wind up short on cash, he said.
Wilson said the board now has bigger fish to fry — like figuring out how to fix 911 funding statewide. Currently, funding is primarily based on fees assessed to landline phone bills. But as more and more customers cancel their landlines in favor of cell phones, less and less money is available for 911 call centers. Something needs to be done at the state level to allow for better funding sources, Wilson said.
“That’s our bigger concern right now.”
