Merilee Dannemann 2021

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES     12-27-21
The year-end donation dilemma
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           A small collection of unneeded junk has been sent to me from charities to which I have never given any money. They send glossy full-color calendars or tote bags printed with their name, in envelopes the size of a pillowcase. The oversize packaging makes them impossible to ignore.
           I get mailed donation requests almost every day – way too many to respond to. Some of these organizations pursue causes I agree with, but I will not be persuaded to donate because their little presents made me feel guilty. I didn’t ask for the stuff, I won’t use it, and I wish they had saved the expense of sending it.
           They probably sent these mailings because once in the last 20 years I donated to a similar organization. So my name is on a mailing list that apparently gets passed around like cheap wine at a fraternity party.
           In this process, somebody misspelled my first name and somebody else misspelled my last name, so the mail proliferates under all these names. I will not donate to anyone who spelled my name wrong because it would start a whole new round of mail.
           I’m also bombarded by charity ads on TV. If you watch TV, especially in the daytime, you have seen them. This worries me for a few reasons.
           First: compassion fatigue. I can stand having my sympathy strings pulled only so much before I start feeling irritated instead of generous.
           Second: They’re competing with each other, which is infuriating. There are commercials for two nationally known children’s hospitals, two veterans’ organizations and now two wildlife organizations running pictures of baby elephants. It’s overload.
           Third, and most important: Their deep pockets may lead us to overlook organizations in our own communities. Whenever I see the TV commercial with the chained dog in the snow, I remind myself to donate to a local animal shelter. Then I remember that I already did.   
           In this last week of the year, you may be receiving annoying reminders about year-end tax planning. In case you’ve been softened by holiday spirit and eggnog, a few suggestions.
           If you are overwhelmed with too much mail, charitable or commercial, you can register with the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association (www.dmaconsumers.org). But they don’t guarantee results.
           To check the legitimacy and the financial record of any charity, look it up on Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org), which rates charities according to how efficiently they use their money.
           A pragmatic word from my accountant: If you itemize deductions and donate before year end, you can write the donation off this year’s taxes. Make sure a mailed donation is postmarked by Dec. 31.
           He says you should expect a letter of acknowledgement from the charity. Especially if you are donating $250 or more, you might contact the charity to make sure the letter says you donated before Dec. 31.
           How do you choose? Charitable decisions are very personal. I’m sure those famous hospitals with the cute kids on TV are genuinely worthy. So are organizations in New Mexico that get little or no publicity. With local organizations, you can check them out in person.
           Your town no doubt has an animal shelter and maybe a few private rescue groups, all underfunded. You can’t go wrong with Roadrunner Food Bank. And consider your local United Way. There are eight regional United Way agencies in New Mexico, plus a statewide Association of United Way agencies. United Way distributes funds to local charities that meet its criteria for community service – doing the screening work that you might not have time to do.
           My preference is to donate to organizations that waste as little as possible of my money doing the business of asking for more.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.
 

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES      12-13-21
Open students’ eyes to more career possibilities
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           To certain people, Scott Fabel is a national hero.
           Fabel runs an auto body and collision repair shop in Appleton, Wisconsin. He is the 2021 winner of the All Star Award from FenderBender, the magazine of the body shop industry.
           To read about him is an inspiration. In an interview about management techniques, he talked about the importance of investing in staff, and among many innovations, his is the first shop in Wisconsin certified to work on Teslas. Like good businessmen everywhere, he supports local nonprofits; he donated a car to a domestic violence organization. The magazine was crammed with advertisements from suppliers and vendors congratulating him.
           I found this magazine in the comfortable waiting room of a local body shop where my repair was, as promised, completed in half an hour, I was treated like a valued customer, and COVID-19 safety was being carefully observed. This shop would naturally subscribe to a magazine that celebrates excellence in its industry.
           The experience reminded me that any industry can be a source of pride and achievement. People in the body shop business, or any business, can live each day and go home each night feeling a sense of accomplishment. It’s not the industry you work in; it’s the attitude you bring to your work.
           Which led me to reflect on the continued discouraging news about New Mexico young people. Too many of our kids have no exposure to the realistic options life offers. Their choices are limited to what they think they know about, which might be teacher (difficult), pro sports star (unattainable) or drug dealer (dangerous and criminal but profitable). I sometimes wonder if the teenage girls who reportedly get pregnant on purpose do so because it leads to a life path they think they understand.
           I have worried (haven’t we all?) about the effects of the lockdown year on the students who had already fallen behind in school. I fear a certain percentage of New Mexico’s next generation will be lost in a rapidly changing world where they don’t have the resources to catch up.
           In 2007 New Mexico passed a law requiring a financial literacy to be offered as an elective in high schools. Now there’s a push to make it a graduation requirement. We hope a basic understanding of interest rates will successfully keep those young graduates from getting trapped into an endless cycle of high-interest loans. But it won’t help kids who reach high school age, drop out and still can’t read.
           Back at the body shop, the employee who eliminated the dent in my car was proud of the job he had done, thought of himself as a skilled craftsman and didn’t mind letting me and the boss know it. The boss thought so, too, but added that it’s hard to recruit young workers, possibly because they don’t even know this type of work exists.
           There are kids in New Mexico who won’t graduate, won’t learn to read, were set further back by the pandemic, and will never catch up with the learning they missed. We might as well recognize that. They can still live a fulfilling and honorable life if they learn about the choices they have, especially by in-person exposure to the real world – while they are still young enough to be curious and open to possibilities.
           Perhaps our schools could make meaningful changes in those kids’ lives by regularly taking students as young as fifth grade to visit workplaces, from science labs to bakeries, so they can experience firsthand the many ways they could use talents they haven’t yet discovered they have. I’d love to take a field trip of kids to that body shop.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.
 

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES    11-29-21
How to reform regulations
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           Twenty-six agencies, said the director of the Cattle Growers Association, speaking at a public forum several years ago. Federal and state. That’s the number of regulatory agencies her members – New Mexico’s ranchers – had to deal with.
           Then the state’s courts required farmers and ranchers to have workers' compensation coverage, terminating a longstanding exemption. Twenty-seven.
           Employment regs. Environmental regs. Building regs. Regs about animals. Food standards. Riparian regs: cows drinking from streams and muddying the riverbanks. Every regulation serving a legitimate purpose – collectively, mindboggling. Methane regs for cow flatulence, maybe not yet.
           The governor has launched a worthy effort to streamline regulations affecting business, to be led by the Economic Development Department and the Regulation and Licensing Department.
           First point: In the language of regulation, government people and business people literally do not speak the same language or understand words to mean the same things.
           To government people, a regulation is not a law. Laws are enacted by the Legislature and can only be changed by the Legislature. Regulations are enacted by a state agency, administered by that agency and incorporated in the state’s administrative code. Regs can be changed by the administrative agency.
           To business people, there is no distinction between rules and laws and very little distinction about which agency does what. There is just a big pile of things they have to do. The distinction is meaningless.
           If we are serious about fixing regulation, we have to follow wherever the business folks take us. That means crossing agency boundaries and asking for legislative as well as regulatory changes. Observe how successful we’ve been so far in simplifying the state’s tax code. (That is, not one bit.)
           Second point: If you think the Regulation and Licensing Department is where all the regulations live, you have been misled by the name. Regulation and Licensing is the department that governs the licensing requirements of specific industries. It is composed of several divisions: Alcoholic Beverage Control, Boards and Commissions, Cannabis Control, Construction Industries, Financial Institutions, Manufactured Housing, and Securities.
           This is nowhere near all the industries that the state regulates. Nor does it cover all the regulations that govern those industries.
           The Boards and Commissions Division regulates 29 industries or professions very different from each other, each with rules, licensing requirements, and an appointed board.  A small sample: Accountancy, body art practitioners, funeral services, optometry, real estate appraisers.
           To me, the big challenge appears to be Construction Industries (CID), possibly because I know less about the Securities or Financial Institutions divisions. In CID, there’s a potential for battles about matters like green building standards. Those arguments will not necessarily result in streamlining. And CID does not cover employment laws or tax laws governing the very same businesses. For example, workers’ comp rules are administered by the Workers’ Compensation Administration. Construction could probably rival the ranchers in the number of agencies to which they are answerable.
           I can also foresee fistfights in small divisions like the Massage Therapy Board. I will reserve the details for another column or we could be here all night.
           Third point: Agency staffs don’t generally talk to other agencies. They may not know about regulations other than their own. The person who insists that you pay a certain tax or fill out a certain form is probably blissfully unaware of the other taxes and forms that you are subject to. That person might believe that business people have nothing more urgent to do with their time than comply with regulations.
           If any regulatory reform is to be successful, it will be up to business leaders to take the lead, insist on breaking down the silo walls, and demand the reforms they really need.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES    11-15-21
Infrastructure, finally
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           I was wondering whether I’d be safe driving across the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.
           When I lived nearby, I drove across it many times and didn’t think twice. I floated under it on a raft. But it’s a long way down. The bridge, relatively new then, is now more than 50 years old.
           A bridge over the Mississippi River was shut down in May because a structural engineer found what was called a crack. In the photo, it looked like a complete break. It’s good to know that routine inspections were being done. So America’s infrastructure is not being fixed unless an emergency is found but at least somebody is looking.
           In Minnesota in 2007 a highway bridge collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. Later analysis found that bridge suffered from an inherent design flaw, steel plates that were not strong enough. How could that happen in America?
           For reassurance, before my recent trip up north, I looked up the Gorge Bridge. I am relieved to report that the bridge underwent an extensive structural renovation in 2012 and was reinspected in 2013.
           Thousands of bridges are waiting their turn. Most are probably less daunting than the one over the 800-foot-deep Rio Grande Gorge.
           Waiting along with them are roads, water systems, the electric power grid, and numerous threats like fire and flood.
           Finally we have a federal infrastructure bill that we hope will start catching up with a long list of deferred maintenance, fixing what’s broken and adding needed resources like broadband that we should have started building years ago. It is infuriating that this legislation has come about only after a bruising protracted political struggle.
           The greatest industrial nation in the history of the world should not hesitate for a minute to spend the money to maintain both the structures we have built and the natural environment that surrounds and supports our communities.
           We have been slowly starving our government for 40 years. Ronald Reagan famously said that government is not the solution but the problem. That was a great soundbite, but the poetic resonance would have been spoiled if he had added some specificity -- if, for example, he had said he meant programs he didn’t like, but he didn’t mean bridges or tunnels or controlling forest fires.
           The anti-government philosophy was then championed by a radical named Grover Norquist who said he wanted to keep reducing taxes until government was so small you could drown it in a bathtub. Ha ha.
           That era implanted an attitude in some Americans that all of government should shrink and weaken, instead of thoughtful analysis about which government was excessive and which government was essential to keeping America strong and healthy.
           Here in New Mexico, we have just had a nonpartisan election in which several school districts, from Los Alamos to Las Cruces, passed bond issues. As citizens and homeowners, we understand that in order to continue using the building safely, you have to fix the roof and check the foundation now and then. But at the national level we’ve been shrinking the maintenance budget for 40 years. The timbers have been rotting.
           If you think this bill spends too much money, think how much less it would be if we had supported responsible maintenance all along.
           According to press releases from our Congressional delegation, some things New Mexico can expect from this law are improvements to roads and bridges, statewide broadband, water systems and drinking water, securing the electric grid against natural disasters, forest management and fire prevention, and clean energy including development of hydrogen.
           Is there anything here you think we don’t need to bother with?
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES    11-1-21
Open the rest stops, for goodness’ sake
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           This week’s hero is the owner of the Conoco station and convenience store at the Wagon Mound exit off I-25.
           On a recent trip to northeastern New Mexico, that station was open on a Sunday afternoon, with a working restroom and fresh coffee.
           In parts of New Mexico, this is appreciated and not taken for granted.
           There was a waiting line for that restroom. Care to guess why? Several miles back, at Watrous, the restrooms at the state-owned public rest area were closed and locked.
           (To be fair, there’s another station at the Wagon Mound exit that we did not visit.)
           This was not just any Sunday afternoon. It was the last day of Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, when thousands of visitors were heading home. It was also a perfect day for an autumn drive through the exquisite turning aspens.
           At the Conoco station, my friends and I saw the same people we had seen at the highway rest stop looking confused and uncomfortable. Now they were standing in line.
           So what does it take to get the state of New Mexico to show a little courtesy to visitors who come here and support the economy?
           Consider this one day.
           A report on the economic impact of the 2019 Balloon Fiesta says 618,620 guests visited from other states, with most coming from Texas, California, Colorado, and Arizona. This year’s report is not yet completed.
           If even half of those visitors came by car, that’s a massive economic boost for towns along our major roads. New Mexico should be encouraging them by showing hospitality. You’d think there would be enough revenue to provide a restroom.
           This report does not address the economic impact of those visitors traveling to and from Albuquerque or where else they might have visited while in New Mexico. Since New Mexico government is expert at state agencies not having the sense to cooperate with each other, I’m wondering whether anybody else is measuring that either.
           I bring up the unknown but significant economic impact because when I mentioned the rest room issue to a legislator, she replied, “How are we going to pay for it?”
           The report said the fiesta generated an estimated $6.52 million for the state. Even at today’s rates that should be enough to pay for a plumber.
           The rest stops are operated by the Department of Transportation, not Tourism or Economic Development.
           I could be wrong, but I don’t think the rest stops were closed for COVID-19. They are as essential as grocery stores. The maintenance staffs should be considered frontline workers. And I don’t think a workforce shortage is likely in that part of the state.
           Last year I offered a suggestion for long-range planning on rest stops. The planning should consider keeping the rest stops always open, safe and clean, electric car charging (which users pay for), and vending operations with simple amenities such as hot coffee, located where they are needed and not competing with the privately owned truck stops.
           In the shorter term, perhaps this service should not be left to DOT by itself. Maybe the relevant state agencies and tourism-related nonprofits, both state and municipal, might form a study group to figure out how to improve rest stops as a means to enhance tourism. They should generate the numbers that would demonstrate to legislators that this is worth funding. I nominate the Balloon Fiesta people to provide some leadership.
           Or maybe we should invite private concessionaires to set up coffee and souvenir booths and keep an eye on the state of the facilities. And give a bidding opportunity to local heroes like the owner of the Conoco station in Wagon Mound.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  10-18-21
PERA elections need more voters
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           Have you voted recently in a PERA election?
           If you are not a member of PERA, please excuse the intrusion. But you or a family member just might be a member and not even remember.
           PERA is the New Mexico Public Employee Retirement Association, the state agency that pays pensions to state and local government retirees and manages the fund from which those pensions are paid.
           If you are a New Mexico state or local government employee, you are a member and you probably know it, but right now that may not be important to you. It will be important later, trust me.
           If you are retired from state or local government, you are probably well aware of your membership because that pension is a major part of your income. You retired with a promise of small regular increases in benefits to meet the cost of living, but the increase has been on shaky ground recently.
           There is another category: former employees who have money vested with PERA and who are not yet eligible to receive a pension. They number more than 13,000 people. If you are one of these, you are eligible to vote. You might not have known that.
           Legislators are talking again, as they did in the 2021 session, about converting the board of PERA from elected to appointed. That is a complicated but fundamentally bad idea. It needs to be countered with logic about why it’s bad and with calm reasoning about why the current system is OK. I’m hoping they will postpone this issue until 2023.
           In the 2021 legislative debate, it was argued that electing the PERA board is bad because voter participation is low. That’s true. It has been just as low for school boards for a century. We have plenty of problems with our schools, but I have never heard those problems blamed on low voter turnout.
           PERA election turnout is low largely because these elections receive almost zero public attention. Candidates run for specific slots – state employee, municipal employee, county employee and retiree. Their primary means of reaching members is very limited exposure through PERA publications. They can’t exactly hold rallies or distribute yard signs because the constituency is thinly spread around the state.
           PERA’S new director, Greg Trujillo, told me the rules allow a candidate to obtain a set of mailing labels to send printed material, but that’s expensive. PERA quite properly won’t give out the database of email addresses because of security and privacy concerns.
           It’s been pointed out that PERA board members tend to be from Santa Fe or Albuquerque rather than from the whole state. That’s true, and it might be because -- with respect for smaller offices all over the state -- government agencies don’t put their financial analysts in field offices. The financial experts tend to be in the large metro centers. A few of the current board members have impressive resumes, exactly the kind of credentials needed for this board.
           The number one reason for proposing to change the PERA board is recent dissension on the board. Yes, there has been dissension. Democracy can be messy. We hope much of the dissension will disappear with the appointment of new director Trujillo a few weeks ago.
           A state employee position and a municipal position will be up for election in 2022. Nominating petitions will be available in April.
           If you are a PERA member, and you believe in democracy, pay attention as we approach the 2022 legislative session. And if you have the background and talent to help oversee the staff that is managing an $18 billion trust fund, think about running for that board.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES   10-4-21
In memory of Jerry Stuyvesant
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           Jerry Stuyvesant died in March. He has not been sufficiently eulogized, and his contribution to New Mexico has not been adequately recognized – partly due to COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings. Here’s a piece of the story of this very distinguished man.
           Jerry (officially Gerald) Stuyvesant was director of the New Mexico Workers’ Compensation Administration when I started there in 1991. His presence was essential to the workers’ compensation reform that saved the state’s economy in 1990.
           He was appointed in 1989 by Republican Gov. Garrey Carruthers and retained by Democratic Gov. Bruce King. As a consummate professional of international stature, he should have stayed through succeeding administrations, which would have enabled the agency to maintain its nonpolitical character. The failure to support his reappointment in 1995 was a bad decision by Republican Gov. Gary Johnson.
           In the mid-1980s, the workers’ compensation system was strangling the economy of New Mexico. Insurance premiums were so high that businesses couldn’t pay them. Almost all insurance companies had deserted the state. The economic climate and costs of litigation had become too hostile and unpredictable.
           The WCA was created by statute in 1986, in part to be a special purpose court for workers’ comp claims, to be decided by a small group of specialized expert judges. The law was amended repeatedly in attempts to get costs under control until the reform of 1990, which finally succeeded.
           As director, Stuyvesant guided the 1990 task force that developed the historic compromise between business and labor, creating the law that saved the economy, the same law that is now in danger of being chipped away, year after year. No director since Stuyvesant has understood the intricacies of the system as thoroughly or had the commanding presence to keep the system stable as he did.
           The thing about workers’ comp, you see, is that if you don’t understand it, you probably dislike it. You think it’s unjust and illogical because it appears to be unfair to your side. Only people who understand it see the brilliance in the way it balances competing interests and limits the influence of the various professions that want get a bigger share at the expense of injured workers and small employers.
           The reform led to foaming-at-the-mouth fury on the part of a few professions whose members had been making a comfortable living from this system for decades. The lawyers now had limits on how much they could charge; and the new system made it easier for injured workers to get benefits without needing a lawyer at all. The doctors now had to live with a fee schedule and limitations on the number of extra services that they could order and bill for. And so on.
           Suddenly this Wild West had – gulp – accountability. Stuyvesant had not written the law, but he was the sheriff in charge of enforcing it. He was up to the task and not intimidated by anyone, even the politicians who were permanently enraged that King had trusted this agency to a Republican holdover.
           He told me years later that his tenure at the WCA was a minor phase of his adventurous professional life. But he was a major contributor in overcoming the crisis of that time.
           He died after a prolonged battle with Plasma Cell Leukemia, which he told me was the result of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.
           Stuyvesant was a United States Air Force veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, having served with distinction for 23 years and retired at the rank of major. He received numerous commendations, medals, and awards including the Meritorious Service Medal and the Air Force Commendation Medal, which he was awarded six times.
           I am forever grateful to have worked for him.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  9-20-21
Let WIPP expand again?
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad is still the only long-term storage site for nuclear waste in the United States. It might be about to get longer-term and riskier.
           WIPP holds radioactive materials 2,000 feet underground in hollowed-out deposits of salt, believed to be geologically stable. Theoretically the waste can stay forever and do no harm.
           WIPP was designated to hold only moderately risky waste, called transuranic or TRU, like clothing and tools contaminated by plutonium, packed in scientifically designed containers that would last for centuries without leaking (except for accidents like the one in 2014 that closed the operation for three years).
           WIPP has been storing TRU waste since 1999, from Los Alamos, Rocky Flats in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina and other places, trucked across New Mexico highways. New Mexico received federal funding to improve our roads, including the bypass around Santa Fe. Not nearly enough.
           This so-called pilot project was supposed to start winding down in 2024. But that does not appear to be happening. The nation has excess plutonium, and the U. S. Department of Energy is eyeing WIPP as the place to put it.
           Of course. There is no other place. The original understanding was that states would share the burden of permanently housing this dangerous material, but other states have successfully resisted. Texas just passed legislation opposing long-term storage (Forbes Magazine called Texas “Atomic Chickens.”) So there’s just WIPP, and places like Hanford, Washington, where lethal nuclear waste is sitting at ground level because nobody will take it.
           The DOE wants to construct add-ons to WIPP that opponents characterize as preludes to a larger expansion. These have to be approved by the state Environment Department. We are awaiting findings from hearings in May and early September.
           Possible expansion of WIPP is not the only issue. Other concerns are the type of material and how far it will travel.
           The bigger picture, in a very simplified version that I hope I’m explaining correctly, is to take clumps or “pits” of plutonium from the Pantex plant near Amarillo, to Los Alamos to be turned into powder, then to the Savannah River DOE site in South Carolina for more processing, then finally to WIPP for burial. The plutonium would cross part of the country three times.
           Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances on earth and lasts for thousands of years. One microscopic particle can give you cancer. A major reason for burying plutonium is to put it where it can’t ever fall into the hands of terrorists.
           For years, this stuff has been crossing New Mexico, sharing the road with New Mexico drivers and oil industry trucks. Some of that traffic is on U. S. 285, which skirts Santa Fe and runs south through Roswell and Artesia into oil country where the oil boom has overstressed the roads.
           Plutonium, I think, is much more dangerous on the road than once it stops moving and is buried forever underground. Any decision on expansion should have major input from people who live near 285 and any other road designated for WIPP traffic.
           Here’s my modest proposal. New Mexico is doing way more than its share of storing nuclear waste, while other states shirk responsibility. I am not one bit in favor of expansion. But if the state decides to allow the expansion, taking all that risk, don’t pussyfoot about the cost. Hold all those Atomic Chicken states – from Maine to California – hostage until they pay the real cost. All of it.
           No more half-adequate road subsidies. Tax every molecule of plutonium. Make them pay until every New Mexican is a millionaire and we can tear up our gross receipts tax.  
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

© 2021 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES   9-6-21
Show your support by safeguarding your organization’s money
By Merilee Dannemann
Triple Spaced Again
           When was the last independent audit of your church’s finances? Or of your favorite nonprofit?
           This might be, for some people, the most offensive question I could possibly ask. “What do you mean,” you might say, “my church or my organization? What are you implying?”
           There are two likely answers to the question.
           The first answer is, “I have no idea.”
           The second is, “We have a financial review every year. It’s routine.”
           If you gave the second answer, present a gold star to your treasurer. Hold a dinner in the treasurer’s honor. The treasurers of churches and nonprofits are unsung heroes.
           If your revenue exceeds $500,000, New Mexico state law requires an annual audit by an independent certified public accountant. If your revenue is below that, a review by an independent CPA using generally accepted accounting principles is recommended. Churches are exempt from the legal requirement but should do this anyway.
           The reasons for doing financial reviews routinely are in two categories, which can be described as catching bad guys and affirming good guys. Audits affirm the good guys, such as treasurers and bookkeepers, by verifying that they are doing things right in protecting the precious dollars donated by their members.  
           Catching bad guys is something you hope never happens. But it does. Here’s the hard part: The person who steals the money is almost always someone everybody liked and trusted.
           It’s so easy for a church, where everybody trusts everybody, to skip the audit because audits are expensive and there are many more compelling uses for the money. As one embezzlement victim commented to me, con-people know this.
           Tsiporah Nephesh, executive director of New Mexico Thrives, a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits, explained that the less expensive alternative is a Letter of Review, which can vary in scope. For moderate-sized organizations a good practice is to seek competitive proposals from three or more accounting firms, avoiding close friends and relatives.
           Bad news stories are easy enough to find.  Some reports from recent years:
           In 2016 a pastor in Ruidoso was convicted of stealing more than $20,000 from his church. One news report said it was more than $70,000.
           The business manager of a very small New Mexico school district pleaded guilty to embezzling $3.4 million from 2002 to 2009.
           In 2015, the principal’s secretary at an Albuquerque middle school was connected to the theft of $25,000 from the school’s activity fund.
           In 2016, a former church secretary in Clovis was convicted of embezzlement totaling $227,650.50. The news report said, “She was responsible for paying the church’s bills and got board members to sign blank checks in advance so she didn’t have to hunt down signatures to pay routine bills.”
           Apparently in these trusting environments, the blank check method – or perhaps an online equivalent – is not uncommon.
           According to the victim I mentioned above, many more stories are kept out of the news by congregational leaders anxious to avoid embarrassment.
           If your organization has reasonably tight financial practices, it will not attract people who are looking for opportunities to steal.    
           The degree of prudency needed may vary with the complexity of the organization. I belong to a few organizations where the treasurer routinely provides reports. I get bored listening, but I am grateful that this person is a volunteer who puts time and effort into balancing our books to the penny.
           And I belong to one little group that has about $3,000 in the bank and collects dues plus $5 per meeting from nonmembers.  For that group, I will continue to ignore my own advice.  And I will always thank the treasurer.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.