Knowing what you're doing makes a difference

The anonymouse behind Anyone but Florence posed some very interesting questions for delegates to ask her:

1. How many people have been terminated or laid off from the Treasurer office since 2001?

2. How many of the 2001 Treasurer staff remain?

(snip…snip)

4. What is your background in accounting and finance?

In fact, the answers to these questions are closely related, and go a long way towards explaining the difference between her performance as SSD director and as S/T.

While Florence will not go down in AFM history as one of the great SSD directors, she was competent. One measure of that (as well as her primary achievement in the job) was the quality of staff that she both hired and retained. An incomplete list of her hires would include Barbara Nielsen, Jeff Tomberg, Laura Brownell, Michael Manley and Sahid Fawaz (all but Laura were subsequently promoted out of SSD by either Steve Young or Tom Lee, while Laura is now SSD director herself.) There were a couple of misfires as well, but it makes a striking contrast to what appears to have gone on in her department since she became S/T.

The only reasonable explanation is that she understood what SSD does in a way that she doesn’t understand her new job. Florence had spent many years as a symphonic musician (and was, I’m told, quite a good one), had been on negotiating committees, had been an ICSOM officer, and had been involved in Local 802 as an activist and an elected officer. She certainly didn’t get everything right as SSD Director, but she had a gut-level understanding of symphonic musicians and what they needed from their union. She wasn’t in over her head.

But she has no real accounting background. I wouldn’t have thought that was all that big a deal either until I began doing my local’s books, when I found that being able to (sporadically) balance a checkbook really wasn’t enough. And Local 8 (at around $170K per year and only a bond fund for assets) is one hell of a lot simpler financially than is the AFM. If I was in her shoes, and terrified to lose my job, and unable to function except in the middle of a hierarchy (the “kiss up, kick down” modality), and totally dependent on what my staff told me in order to understand what they were doing, I might make lousy personnel decisions too.

Or maybe not. Steve Sprague wasn’t an accountant either, but he seemed to do OK. And his annual reports were generally on time, and his financial reports were actually understandable and revealing about how the AFM spent its money. Of course Steve was railroaded out of the AFM on what now appear to be largely bogus politically motivated charges. I doubt that even real evidence of incompetence will be enough to dislodge Florence. The ability to shift with the winds is a very important one at 1501, and no one is better at that than her.

Comments

[Robert Levine]

“As I recall from the period Steve Sprague resigned, the charges were not bogus. He admitted his wrong doing. In other words, President Young at the time caught him with his hand in the cookie jar - something to the tune of 20k. Other officers including our own Bailey have gone to jail for this and Sprague barely escaped that because he started paying it back. What had transpired was reported fully at my conference and the convention. I checked and a lot of this is in the IEB Special Meeting minutes of March 1999.”

“Bogus” was a poor choice of words. “Politically motivated” is more accurate. Young did indeed find some improper charges in Sprague’s credit card. They came at a very convenient time for Young, as he had grown to loath Sprague, and he lost no time in filing charges with the IEB (which were never heard, by the way).

As for Sprague “admitting his wrongdoing,” he actually wrote “…I want you all to know that I have taken this action voluntarily, and as a result of what I believe to have been conduct unbecoming my position as the AFM's chief financial officer. I have unintentionally breached the fiscal trust you have conveyed upon me, for which I believe there is no excuse that could ever condone or forgive such conduct.”

The key word is “unintentionally,” and, given what little I know about the nature and timing of the transactions in question, I believe it. I also believe that he was right to resign. But there are still some questions in my mind. Would this have led to Sprague’s resignation had Steve Young not been out to get him? Were Sprague’s actions criminal? (I suspect that, if they had been, the AFM and B&K would have been legally bound to inform the relevant authorities.) And do we know the whole story, or just the history that the victors wrote? I have some recollection of a rumor about Sprague filing some kind of civil action against the AFM over his departure and a subsequent settlement. But there’s no mention of that in the IEB minutes, unless it’s buried under the “executive session” gravestone. And it may well have been just a rumor.

[Sprague had his hand deep in the cookie jar.]

Mr. Observer you stated:
"Or maybe not. Steve Sprague wasn’t an accountant either, but he seemed to do OK. And his annual reports were generally on time, and his financial reports were actually understandable and revealing about how the AFM spent its money. Of course Steve was railroaded out of the AFM on what now appear to be largely bogus charges."

As I recall from the period Steve Sprague resigned, the charges were not bogus. He admitted his wrong doing. In other words, President Young at the time caught him with his hand in the cookie jar - something to the tune of 20k. Other officers including our own Bailey have gone to jail for this and Sprague barely escaped that because he started paying it back. What had transpired was reported fully at my conference and the convention. I checked and a lot of this is in the IEB Special Meeting minutes of March 1999. It was too bad because I really liked Steve Sprague a lot. He did get all of the required reports out early or on time with more details. He was much better than Florence or Lee ever were in trying to do the same thing.