Rebecca Otto wins the National Excellence in Accountability Award! Excellence in Accountability Award

Rebecca Otto receives the League of Minnesota Cities President's Award! LMC President's Award

Notable Quote

As an employee of a small city (pop. < 3K) the difference between Auditor Anderson and Auditor Otto has been amazing. Anderson used every chance she could to embarrass local officials when they made what were nearly always honest mistakes. You had city clerks afraid to call the auditor's office to ask questions for fear they would be put under a microscope. With Auditor Otto, the staff works with local governments to ensure they are conducting themselves in accordance with state statutes. They try to stop problems before they arise, not wait in ambush in order to issue a press release later.

-MRW, commenting on MNPublius



Rebecca Otto for Auditor on Facebook

Excellence vs. Errors

There's a clear contrast between Rebecca and her opponent and it has to do with how they respond to challenges.

Excellence

Relentless focus on excellence leads to national leadership

Rebecca is relentlessly focused on excellence.  She has earned the coveted National Excellence in Accountability Award from the non-partisan National State Auditors Association (NSAA).  In 2010, after chairing the national Human Resources committee, Rebecca was elected to the Executive Committee of the NSAA and is in line to become its national president.  She is also chair of the Minnesota Collaborative Governance Council, which she helped form, and which finds new efficiencies between all levels of government.  Because of her efficiencies, she has been able to cut her own funds and still do nearly three times as many investigations as her predecessor and challenger.

Errors

It's not the mistakes - it's the mentality

Pat Anderson Mistake-o-meter

Anyone can make a mistake, as Rebecca is the first to admit.  That is why you put procedures in place to double-check, and even then you can miss things.  We all do our best.

But Pat Anderson has an unfortunate history of making not just one or two mistakes, but error after error in official financial documents, from her campaign finance report for State Auditor in 2002, on through to the current year. 

The fact is, this pattern shows carelessness.  Back when she was State Auditor, Anderson made hundreds of millions of dollars in errors - then tried to cover it up by first denying the errors, then quietly issuing corrected reports without indicating the changes. 

The mistakes aren't just math errors.  In 2006, a laptop computer was stolen from the State Auditor's office under Anderson's watch.  Not her fault.  But she didn't take any extra precautions, and as a result three more laptops were stolen a month later - and these contained sensitive personal data - including Minnesotans' social security numbers.  That's a judgment error.

Now, in 2010, the Legislative Auditor has faulted Anderson for yet another security breach along the same lines - exposing more Minnesotans' private data, including names and social security numbers, as a result of her actions as Commissioner of the Department of Employee Relations.

This pattern of math errors and judgment errors, year in and year out, shows a sloppy approach to details and numbers by a person who is more concerned with activism and grandstanding in the press.  Anderson's response to Rebecca's pointing this pattern out?   She says it's "just stupid."  Even though she wants to be the State Auditor - to watch over your tax dollars - she thinks that getting the numbers right is stupid. "That’s her thing, and I’m ignoring her," Anderson told the Bemidji Pioneer, "because it’s so stupid." 

It's not that Anderson has made mistakes - we all do.  It's that she doesn't learn from them and has never taken responsibility for them, and consequently she keeps making them over and over. 

Pat Anderson's ongoing pattern of errors

Who is a better choice for the state's top numbers job?

Next up: Results vs. Grandstanding