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School board chooses five for audit oversight committee
By Natalie Shelton
The Liberty Board of Education named five community members to its new audit oversight committee, a task made harder by the sheer number of patrons who applied.
Fifty community members applied for the committee, which also will be composed of the district’s new chief financial officer and board members Evan Tripp and Bob Young.
Board members interviewed 10 final candidates and then voted for five: Ethel Brown, owner and chief financial officer for Acorn Products; Greg Chase, internal audit manager for Ash Grove Cement Co.; Hank Guggenmos, certified public accountant for Cochran Head Vick & Co. and also an internal revenue agent for 35 years with the Internal Revenue Service; Rob Jackson, special agent for the U.S. Treasury Department; and Brady Kelley, chief financial and business strategy officer for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Alternates are Marianne Hill, a former special prosecutor, and Richard Robinson, a risk management agency auditor for the USDA.
“On behalf of the Board of Education, I want to thank all of the patrons who submitted applications,” board president John Sedlock said. “The entire group was highly qualified. I think the process we used allowed us to pick the five most qualified patrons, and I look forward to the results of their efforts.”
Sedlock said the committee will review the findings of independent auditor Westbrook & Co. before passing those findings along to the board. The committee also will help select the audit company who will perform the district’s traditional annual audit, receive financial audit reports, review recommendations and develop an implementation plan.
Here’s a snapshot of each person selected:
Ethel Brown
Brown, a licensed CPA, at one time worked for a public accounting firm that in part performed school and city audits. She and her husband now own Acorn Products, a shipping materials brokerage, along with a pallet recycling company.
Her family moved to Liberty in 1962, and she is a member of the class of 1973 at Liberty High School, the first class to graduate at the present building.
“I think I can not only look at whether funds balance, but I can look beyond the numbers to see what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense,” Brown said.
Brown said she wouldn’t be afraid to speak up.
“People who know me will say you know where you stand with me,” she said.
Greg Chase
Chase is a CPA, a certified internal auditor and will receive the certified fraud examiner designation within the next two years. He has started two audit departments and developed audit plans.
Chase said his experience could greatly benefit the district, as part of the committee’s duties will be to choose an independent auditing firm to oversee the district’s traditional annual audits.
Part of his present duties with his company includes choosing independent auditing firms.
“I can ask questions to understand what services they provide and what they don’t,” he said. “… I understand how procedures could or would fail.”
Hank Guggenmos
Guggenmos moved to Liberty in 1970 and retired from the Internal Revenue Service after 35 years. For the last three years, he’s prepared federal, state and local tax returns for Cochran Head Vick & Co. in Merriam, Kan., and has represented all classes of tax clients to the IRS on audits.
Guggenmos said he could help the district select a quality auditing firm and “make sure they do their job properly.”
“Working for the IRS, I usually ask questions they don’t want me to ask,” he said.
When asked of a time he operated in his job with integrity, he said he had been asked by individuals to prepare tax returns in a way that he didn’t feel was ethical.
“I’ve said to them, ‘If you want to do it that way, I’ll wash my hands of it,’” he said.
Rob Jackson
As a special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department, Jackson investigates crimes reported by financial institutions and also trains and mentors new agents. His duties include analyzing financial books and records in order to understand and interpret financial transactions.
Jackson also participates in task forces with other federal, state and local law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to coordinate investigations.
Jackson said he felt part of his job on the committee would be to help select a new auditing firm and set up “standards of checks and balances, but not make it so onerous that nothing gets done.”
“… I like to be anonymous, behind the scenes,” he said. “I think I have a lifetime of skills that would be useful.”
Brady Kelley
Kelley, a CPA, worked as a staff and senior auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers for three years before he began duties at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners 10 years ago.
As the organization’s chief financial officer, he has completed five successful annual financial statement audits, receiving unqualified audit opinions and reports of no material weaknesses in internal controls and no management findings or recommendations.
When asked about a situation to which he responded with integrity, he said he has worked for an organization that faced a similar situation as the Liberty school district.
“We were on a side of defending our internal controls,” he said. “We asked for an outside audit for help not only in identifying problems but finding solutions.”
In his years of service, he has been “trained to have a level of professional skepticism, not pass a judgment of what went wrong.”
Staff writer Natalie Shelton covers Liberty schools. She can be reached at 781-4941 or nshelton@npgco.com.
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Fifty community members applied for the committee, which also will be composed of the district’s new chief financial officer and board members Evan Tripp and Bob Young.
Board members interviewed 10 final candidates and then voted for five: Ethel Brown, owner and chief financial officer for Acorn Products; Greg Chase, internal audit manager for Ash Grove Cement Co.; Hank Guggenmos, certified public accountant for Cochran Head Vick & Co. and also an internal revenue agent for 35 years with the Internal Revenue Service; Rob Jackson, special agent for the U.S. Treasury Department; and Brady Kelley, chief financial and business strategy officer for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Alternates are Marianne Hill, a former special prosecutor, and Richard Robinson, a risk management agency auditor for the USDA.
“On behalf of the Board of Education, I want to thank all of the patrons who submitted applications,” board president John Sedlock said. “The entire group was highly qualified. I think the process we used allowed us to pick the five most qualified patrons, and I look forward to the results of their efforts.”
Sedlock said the committee will review the findings of independent auditor Westbrook & Co. before passing those findings along to the board. The committee also will help select the audit company who will perform the district’s traditional annual audit, receive financial audit reports, review recommendations and develop an implementation plan.
Here’s a snapshot of each person selected:
Ethel Brown
Brown, a licensed CPA, at one time worked for a public accounting firm that in part performed school and city audits. She and her husband now own Acorn Products, a shipping materials brokerage, along with a pallet recycling company.
Her family moved to Liberty in 1962, and she is a member of the class of 1973 at Liberty High School, the first class to graduate at the present building.
“I think I can not only look at whether funds balance, but I can look beyond the numbers to see what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense,” Brown said.
Brown said she wouldn’t be afraid to speak up.
“People who know me will say you know where you stand with me,” she said.
Greg Chase
Chase is a CPA, a certified internal auditor and will receive the certified fraud examiner designation within the next two years. He has started two audit departments and developed audit plans.
Chase said his experience could greatly benefit the district, as part of the committee’s duties will be to choose an independent auditing firm to oversee the district’s traditional annual audits.
Part of his present duties with his company includes choosing independent auditing firms.
“I can ask questions to understand what services they provide and what they don’t,” he said. “… I understand how procedures could or would fail.”
Hank Guggenmos
Guggenmos moved to Liberty in 1970 and retired from the Internal Revenue Service after 35 years. For the last three years, he’s prepared federal, state and local tax returns for Cochran Head Vick & Co. in Merriam, Kan., and has represented all classes of tax clients to the IRS on audits.
Guggenmos said he could help the district select a quality auditing firm and “make sure they do their job properly.”
“Working for the IRS, I usually ask questions they don’t want me to ask,” he said.
When asked of a time he operated in his job with integrity, he said he had been asked by individuals to prepare tax returns in a way that he didn’t feel was ethical.
“I’ve said to them, ‘If you want to do it that way, I’ll wash my hands of it,’” he said.
Rob Jackson
As a special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department, Jackson investigates crimes reported by financial institutions and also trains and mentors new agents. His duties include analyzing financial books and records in order to understand and interpret financial transactions.
Jackson also participates in task forces with other federal, state and local law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to coordinate investigations.
Jackson said he felt part of his job on the committee would be to help select a new auditing firm and set up “standards of checks and balances, but not make it so onerous that nothing gets done.”
“… I like to be anonymous, behind the scenes,” he said. “I think I have a lifetime of skills that would be useful.”
Brady Kelley
Kelley, a CPA, worked as a staff and senior auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers for three years before he began duties at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners 10 years ago.
As the organization’s chief financial officer, he has completed five successful annual financial statement audits, receiving unqualified audit opinions and reports of no material weaknesses in internal controls and no management findings or recommendations.
When asked about a situation to which he responded with integrity, he said he has worked for an organization that faced a similar situation as the Liberty school district.
“We were on a side of defending our internal controls,” he said. “We asked for an outside audit for help not only in identifying problems but finding solutions.”
In his years of service, he has been “trained to have a level of professional skepticism, not pass a judgment of what went wrong.”
Staff writer Natalie Shelton covers Liberty schools. She can be reached at 781-4941 or nshelton@npgco.com.