The Agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners
The Missoula County commissioners host the "The Agenda" podcast, which aims to help county residents better understand how local government works and how it affects their lives. In each episode, the commissioners sit down with fellow staff, elected officials and community partners to discuss public sector projects and trending topics.
The Communications Division at Missoula County produces "The Agenda" with support from Missoula Community Access Television. If you have something you’d like to add to the conversation, let us know at missoula.co/podcast.
The Agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners
Beyond the lowest price: Incorporating values into Missoula County policies and purchasing
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The role of county auditor goes beyond numbers and spreadsheets. Missoula County Auditor Dave Wall shares how his office keeps the County’s spending in check not just by tracking dollars and cents but through incorporating value into every transaction.
Wall shares his journey of working up from the County mail room to elected official and the progression of learning how his personality and strengths can be used in public service. As an elected official, his office serves as the independent internal auditor for the County, so every claim is reviewed with equity and fairness, and taxpayers know their money is being distributed with due care. He also discusses why he’s decided to prioritize making sure the County’s policies reflect its values, which includes viewing them through the lens of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
Anyone who wants to learn more or view spending reports is welcome to contact Wall at dwall@missoulacounty.us or by calling 406-258-3526.
Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for your podcast recording support.
Text us your thoughts and comments on this episode!
Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!
Welcome back to Tip of the Spear with your Missoula County commissioners, Dave Strohmaier, Juanita Vero and myself, Josh Slotnick, and we're really glad to have you with us today. But way more importantly, we have with us, our friend and colleague Dave Wall, who's our county auditor, to get started. Dave, could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and what attracted you to public service and in public service, why be an auditor?
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, that's actually a pretty good question. Well, I'm Dave. I have an accounting degree. For one thing, I'm an accountant by trade, although I'm not saying I'm the best one. I sort of came to public service in a very strange route. You know, I was in the private sector working at a company remanufacturing toner cartridges and figured this is not going to last forever. This company, the owners, were getting a little bit on in age and I felt like I had to do something. And so I went back to school for accounting about halfway through my good friend Bobbi Hainline, who worked for the County and she was in Central Services. She decided to go to Partnership Health Center. She said, Dave, this job is perfect for you. You've got to come to Central Services because they need somebody who has a little bit more interest in accounting and things like that. So I did. I applied for the job and I got it. And my idea first was to finish up my degree and then work in the finance office here because the head of Central Services was also the head of finance at that time. And it just so happened. I'd been there for about a year that the old auditor, Barbara Beren's, her chief deputy, retired. And so I was like, Well, I'll just apply for that job. And I knew Barbara. We had worked together on some projects, and so I was able to get that job. So it was sort of just fortuitous events that that got me into the County. From the very moment that I was in Central Services I was really surprised and taken of the quality of people that came through there every day.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:Can you real quick for our listeners? Could you explain what Central Services sounds so cryptic?
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:It's the opposite of our peripheral service, right?
Auditor Dave Wall:Right. And the peripheral services are a little bit too out there.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:That would be us.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:This is closer to the burning red hot core.
Auditor Dave Wall:Just about. Just about. It is an internal services department for the County. So is a combination of the mailroom. It's also where we have office supplies and where they take care of the motor pool. So things like that that other departments kind of use throughout the County. And so I definitely did start in the mailroom at the County. I like to point that out, right? But anyway, yeah, I was just from that moment, everybody was so not only nice, but really competent, really smart, really engaging. And I just was so impressed with the people that worked here at the County. And there was a lot of pride, too. So it was kind of instilled in me from when I first started out that I was doing work that made the County government run better, which then made for a better county government for the population and and really the citizens of the County, they're people I live near, right? As we always talk about they are our friends they are the people that live in our neighborhoods. So that sense of public service was there right from the beginning. And that went on from into the auditor's office when I was working there, when I got to the auditor's office. You know, a lot of the work that I did was just about checking to make sure that there was the proper documentation for the purchases that we make and also duplicate payments and things like that. So I found a lot of duplicate payments. We saved ourselves a lot of money and it really did a service, in my view, to the citizens of the County. So I just felt good about it.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Great.
Auditor Dave Wall:I just felt good about being in public service, even compared to when I was in private industry, when that was, which is good too. But I just, it feels good to be in public service to me.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:Yeah. So like us commissioners, you're an elected official, can you, I never really understood this, can you explain why your position is elected and how does that impact the work you do?
Auditor Dave Wall:Absolutely. A lot of people don't understand that. I would say that as the County auditor, I'm an internal auditor for the County government and the internal audit in any organization, whether it's in the private sector or the public sector, the big goal for that department is to have a large measure of independence, and that can happen in a lot of different ways, often in the private industry. The internal auditor is answerable to a special part of the board of directors, called the audit committee not not answerable to say the CEO and things like that and government. The easiest way to get that independence is to be an elected official. For example, when when you all have an employee reimbursement claim for some of your travels or things like that, we look at those reimbursements the exact same way we look at reimbursements for every employee in the County. And if somebody came to us some time and said, you know, some important, whether it's the commissioners or some other elected official in the County or some department head, we really look at need to look into this.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:Thank you for that.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:That independence would be it would be crucial if you worked for a different BCC (Board of County Commissioners). Not any of us and any one of those people was doing something fraudulent. They could put pressure on you to look the other way or you'd lose your job. But the fact that you are accountable to no one but the voters means all the people you work with have to undergo the scrutiny you would apply to anyone.
Auditor Dave Wall:That's right, and it's funny because internal audit is always, I don't want to say under attack, but it's always something where not just in government and all industries. It's something that companies and organizations want to minimize because we're kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, you know. And that certainly happens in government. Even here in Montana, there are, you know, some people would like to make this an appointed position instead of an elected position, and some people would like to make it a part time position if they can. And in fact, that's actually passed. People can do that. And to me, that's just a way for some county commissioners, and you all would never do this I know, but some county commissioners can hang that over the head of a county auditor and say, Oh, you're going to look into something, I'm doing, well, maybe your position should be part time.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:Well, I just given that it's what you're describing is a pretty important check and balance within government. So I picture you and your staff dozens of staff with green visors on just hovering over ledgers and and toiling away to make sure that expenditures are our
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Ink stained hands
Commissioner Juanita Vero:Feathers everywhere.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:Exactly. But for folks who are not familiar. You're with your office. Talk a little bit about just from a staffing capacity standpoint, what is your office look like and what are some of the challenges that you've been experiencing, particularly during the pandemic here?
Auditor Dave Wall:Sure, sure. As far as what it looks like, it's about 10 by 7 (feet). No, no. Yeah, we are. If you ever saw The Muppet Christmas Carol, you remember all the rats. Yeah, that was us.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:That's that's the image I had.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, we are actually a three person team, which is the most it's ever been. I consider us now fully staffed.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:That's good.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, I think it's absolutely wonderful. Obviously, there's more that I'd like to do than we have capacity for. I'm sure that's the case with every single department in the County, but they're my coworkers are stunningly amazing. And so, you know, the three of us really do the work of five people. I do the work of one and they each do the work of two. And that's that's kind of that's kind of, well, maybe I do one and a half. But anyway, I just have I think I have absolutely an amazing department. So some of the things we're responsible for mainly are going over all claims against the County. That is, when bills come in and we have invoices, we make sure that those are legitimate county claims. So we were talking about employee reimbursements before. We just want to make sure the County isn't paying for somebody's vacation, things like that, right? We want to make sure that the invoices are from a legitimate business and the items being purchased are used by the County, not used by somebody personally, things like that. And then that county policy is being followed when we go through purchases.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:It's important work that needs to go on regardless of whether we're living through a global pandemic or not. But how how has what we're living through impacted your work and your staff work at all?
Auditor Dave Wall:Well, there's been a lot of questions about procurement, which is the other kind of section that the auditor's office. The other thing we do a lot procurement is just the idea of recognizing things that we need, the procedures we use to go and find a vendor to to purchase those things. And then the contracting side procurement is kind of a large umbrella term for all of that. But for a lot of these purchases, depending on the size of the purchase, we have to follow county policy and follow certain procedures and sometimes state statute. If it's a really big purchase to make sure we're following the rules and doing things the right way so that the public can look at our purchase and say, OK, I know the steps they took to make this decision, and so I know they're taking due care with county taxpayer money. The pandemic has very much affected that because there's just a lot more purchasing going on. There are special rules for COVID related purchases if we were in a state of emergency, and so we just had to make sure that we were doing things the right way in that way. So like everybody, we're dealing with a lot of uncertainty and kind of new things.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:Sure.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Thanks, David. Two questions for you. One's pretty mundane.
Auditor Dave Wall:Oh, good.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Yeah. So there are people out there who really want to make sure and as well they should that their tax dollars are well accounted for and that all the i's are dotted, t's are crossed, et cetera. Is the information you dig into available to the public, how can people see who we paid for? What?
Auditor Dave Wall:Absolutely. All of our claims have documentation that we can send to anybody who asks for them. So we have within our accounting system, we have the claim itself. So it'll have the vendor, it'll have the coding, it'll have the dollar amount. But we also have attached to it the documentation that proves what we purchase, whether it's an invoice, the contract, the request for proposal that we use and even other writings. And like in credit card purchases, we not only have the statement, but we have the receipts each purchase and sometimes there's notations about why this purchase needed to be made. So we do have documentation for every purchase. If anybody out there would like information for those purchases, I'm happy to send that to them if they just contact me. I'll be glad to do.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:And how do they do that? How should somebody reach you?
Auditor Dave Wall:They can call me at 406-258-3526 or the easiest way, because I'm in and out of the office so much, is through email, which is my first initial and last name dwall@missoulacounty.us And we will send them this is public information. It's your money. You deserve to know what we're buying.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Thanks. So now the less mundane question, but that was super important. Thank you. We all know that you've spent a big chunk of the last year working with our Equity Coordinator, Jamar Galbreath, on inventorying our policies internally, as well as how we're delivering services externally, really with an eye towards what we're calling JEDI justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. So after being part of this process, what are some of the take-home messages you'd like people to know at this point in the process?
Auditor Dave Wall:The first thing I'd like people to know, and I don't know if they'd be interested to know it, but it's really important for me that they know this. I am on the internal JEDI team, and one of the things that I recognize that I understand is that when we talk about structural racism or structural prejudice or systemic racism, I am and my department is the structure. We are the system. And so if we don't do things on purpose to reverse trends that are going on now, we will be sort of abiding this racism that's going on or sexism that's going on or what what not what have you. So we have to take intentional steps to try and make things better. And one of the things that I've been doing very seriously and it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy, and I'm not saying I'm super courageous, but it takes a little courage is just to look at me personally, look at my internal biases, understand them. I then need to forgive myself a little bit for my internal biases, understand that everyone has them and work with other people to come up with a plan to kind of change direction for myself and for the department and hopefully be a part of the team that does this for the County in general. It's slow work. It's very, very slow work, but we've been working pretty hard on our purchasing and contracts. And if I could actually, if you don't mind, the purchasing policy will be coming before you in March, but sort of asking about what are we doing about it? I'd like to read you the general principles of our purchasing policy. It's only five bullet points. Would that be OK? Yeah.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:There's a hundred page document sitting there. I was a little worried.
Auditor Dave Wall:Section one. So the general principles are purchasing decisions should reflect the values of Missoula County. The second bullet point equity and sustainability are as important as cost and making purchasing decisions. The third one, the public is best served by a competitive, open and fair procurement process. The fourth one is purchasing and procurement should be approached with humility and trust in the process. And finally, all steps in the process must be documented and available for public view. The most important one, and the one that informs all the others, is purchasing decisions should reflect the values of Missoula County. In the past, we have always centered on costs. And still, when I talked to folks today, if they are complaining about a certain procedure or something like that, they'll say, Oh, but I know a really a much cheaper way to go to really save the County money, which I really appreciate them looking out for. But there's other factors involved here. There's equity, there is environmental sustainability, and our purchasing policy will lean heavily on environmental sustainability. I don't know if a more important issue in our time and also frankly, just making sure we have a public process to increase trust in the public for their county government.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:This is fantastic and it's good the language that you just shared. I mean, you put the two words, county auditor, together, and it's like, oh, snooze fest.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, yeah.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:And just the words you use humility and trust. It's really powerful.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:And so I've talked about you to my friends and I've teased you about the same sort of soccer language. You're like the attacking defender.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:He's like scoring goals, moving us forward in terms of policy, but your official role is this thing where we're imagining ink stained fingers and going over ledgers and yawn. Yawn. When actually you're, this is the sort of thing that moves us forward.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. I definitely my general aim is to look at internal auditing a different way. I'm a member of both the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and the Internal Auditors of America. And I'm telling you, and those are great organizations, but I look at the things they say and how to implement sort of fraud mitigation and things like that, and I just want to do things a different way.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:So I guess on that front? Are there mentors out there that you look to that are doing the sort of things that you are because you are taking a pretty expansive vision of what an auditor can be in the state of Montana? And I've never heard of other auditors, certainly in the state of Montana, and I have no sense of what auditors are doing outside the state of Montana. But I've I've not heard of anyone doing the sort of policy work, expansive vision work that you are.
Auditor Dave Wall:You know, as far as mentors. Of course, my former boss, Barbara Berens, is my biggest mentor, and she had said to me one time, many times I meet her all the time. In fact, I'm meeting her tomorrow. You have to make this job yours. You know, she was not looking for me to continue what she was doing, although I've done that to a certain extent. If you have a few minutes for a little bit of a story, my first year as county auditor was the very worst year of my life. Absolutely. And it's because I tried to be somebody else. I tried to be somebody that I wasn't, and I didn't have the skill set for that and I didn't have, quite frankly, the personality for that. So I decided to really get in touch with my own personality, see what my strengths were, which I do have a few strengths, recognize what my weaknesses were and just try to design an audit function around those. One of the things I did was to understand I didn't have a lot of experience. I had just graduated with a degree in accounting, like a month before I came became county auditor. It was my first job as an accountant, really. And so I decided, Well, that's OK. But the first year I was just trying to convince everybody I knew what I was talking about by faking it, and it was awful. I finally decided, OK, maybe I know, don't know what I'm doing all the time, but there's a lot of people around me that can help. And so from that time forward, almost everything I did involved a team of some kind and involved a group of people. One of the things we do is deal with grants and grant management, and I don't know a lot about grants and people come to me asking about it. I have no idea. But just a few months ago, I started a grant management team. This team includes people from the grants division of CAPS (Community and Planning Services). It involves people from all different departments that receive grants, including the Sheriff's Office and the Attorneys Office, Justice Court, the Health Department, all over the County. It involves some folks from our finance office and budget office. It's kind of like 20-25 people in it, and we're a team and we discuss certain issues that come with grants and it's an email group too. And so whenever there's a question, we can email that group and say, You know, I have this weird situation. What should I do? I'm probably not going to really answer any individual may not know, but probably somebody in that group is going to be able to help.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:Do you have an example of a weird situation you could share?
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah. So I just got one the other day from my buddy Kelly McGuire, who's one of the best county employees that there is. She's amazing, but she was talking about a grant that they received wherein they they do some work for county residents and also for some residents in a separate county. I can't remember which one right now, but it's one we we work with quite often. They had a lot of people say, Well, there are a lot of people in these other counties, separate ones that could really use this kind of work. But you know, part of the grant funding is for my time and for. So can we really help these people in these other counties? Is that legitimate? My immediate answer was, well, this is grant funded. So it's grant money, not Missoula County money. So I don't see as big a problem with that, but I got to tell you, I don't know. So let's let's put it to the team, and we haven't resolved that yet. But it's I mean, that's again, because it's recent enough that I remember obviously, you know, I have trouble remembering two days ago, but yeah, that's one that I think this will be solved by this group, whereas I really couldn't do it myself.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:You have already touched on, but if you want to expand a bit on on how you've implemented policy changes to address our, you know, larger county goals or vision, especially in areas around, you know, social, economic and environmental issues, is there anything that you want to expand upon?
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, maybe two things very briefly. First, there was a resolution that gave procurement preference to businesses that are certified as disadvantaged business enterprise by the state of Montana. This is for any time we go out for a limited solicitation or an invitation for bid and an RFP, which is a request for proposal. Any of these procedures now can get into the snooze fest part. But anyway, any of these procedures where we have to choose a vendor for something if some company who sends in a proposal is registered as a DPE, disadvantaged business enterprise, by the state of Montana, they would actually get a reduction in their bid. Or if if it's like an RFP where we use a scoring system, we'll raise their score by five percent to give them a little bit of a leg up based on the historical inequalities that have gone on for those groups of people as far as acquiring credit.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:If I remember right, we were using a model that came from that super crazy, far left organization, Montana Department of Transportation,
Auditor Dave Wall:The Montana Department of Transportation, a bunch of lefties. That's right. No, they were actually very, very helpful. And this is something that's done nationwide. And in fact, the federal government has their own DBE program, but we used Montana's and for good for good reason.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:That's great.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah. The other thing, though, because I don't know how much good that's going to do, necessarily. The other thing is our new purchasing policy will give the sort of the right now between zero and 10K, we give department heads a lot of authority to purchase from whoever they want to. We're going to move that to $20,000 to give a little bit more flexibility because really the key to getting businesses owned by these groups of people, people of color or, you know, indigenous groups or what have you is really to start in the small dollar contracts. And this will make it much, much easier for departments to just go with those kind of businesses and making their purchasing decisions. I expect it to make more of a difference than that resolution.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:That is super exciting work, Dave and I am so appreciative of a fellow elected official taking an expansive vision of what you can do in your your office above and beyond, simply taking a more limited view of of we put those visors on and audit internal processes, and that's it.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Yeah, I would I would use the word exemplary. I think we should all be thinking expansively about how we solve problems. That's why we're here to help make things better, not just to sit within our lane.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, I'm not very good at sticking in my lane.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:So share share with us a good book or nugget of wisdom you've come across recently.
Auditor Dave Wall:I just read "The Crimean War". There's a lot of parallels. And I read "The new Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander, an absolutely fantastic book, a classic on criminal justice issues. I also read "Wagnerism" by Alex Ross, which is absolutely, absolutely fantastic.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier:It deals with feelings that...
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Slip over that fits in with kind of that part of the national move right now as well.
Auditor Dave Wall:It does, but it also deals with art and art's place in culture and how it can be used by certain people.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Can you separate the artist from the art?
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, yeah. It depends on how long ago it was, but also Wagner, though he was incredibly anti-Semitic, more so than most people even know. He was also like an environmentalist, and he was an animal rights person and he was anti-war. And, you know, he would not have appreciated the Nazi regime, except for the virulent anti-Semitism of the author.
Commissioner Juanita Vero:Thanks so much, Dave.
Auditor Dave Wall:Yeah, absolutely.
Commissioner Josh Slotnick:Thank you.