News-Record.com

The State Auditor's office released a review today of Operation Sickle Cell, a nonprofit run by Rep. Mary McAllister.

Because of the politics involved here, this wasn't exactly your standard-issue audit.

Rep. Mary McAllister heads the agency found herself last summer in front of the State Board of Elections, fined for some questionable book keeping. At one point, her name was coming up in the same context as Rep. Thomas Wright, of Wilmington - not a good thing 'round these parts.

McAllister seems to be done with her SBOE troubles, but the review of Operation Sickle Cell has and will get quite a bit of attention because she heads it.

The audit found some things that should be troubling to any nonprofit board of directors but are fixable. Better policies can be put in place, the board can take better minutes, employees can be told to get the political campaign fliers off their computers. No money was found to be missing or misappropriated.

However, the thing that looks the worse, the thing that has and will generate the most attention is finding #1 from the audit:

OPERATION SICKLE CELL BLOCKED READY ACCESS TO THE OFFICE OF THE STATE AUDITOR IN VIOLATION OF STATE LAW AND THE GRANT CONTRACT.

Say it with me kids: The cover-up is always worse than the original transgression.

The Auditor's office went to the court, and got, a subpoena to look at the group's computers. Operation Sickle Cell disputed the auditor's statement on this, writing in part:

At no time did Operation Sickle Cell refuse to cooperate with OSA, except with respect to the agency’s requests to have a Superior Court Judge determine the appropriateness of the subpoenas issued by OSA. Operation Sickle Cell understands that it must balance its privacy rights and the privacy rights of its clients against the responsibility of OSA to review grants of public funds made to private corporations.

You can read the whole back-and-forth by clicking here.

The upside of this for McAllister is that the audit is out there now and the news cycle it has prompted will be done before the election cycle hits full stride and way before the legislative session.