Silver calls on Crane to release Idaho investment review info

BOISE – Deborah Silver, the Twin Falls accountant who’s challenging four-term Idaho state Treasurer Ron Crane, is calling on Crane to release a full review of questioned investment transactions to state auditors. “What else does he have to hide?” Silver asked. “Idaho taxpayers deserve the truth from their state treasurer.” Crane maintains he’s released all the information he can, but Idaho’s state auditor’s office, in an audit report released at the end of June, said it still hadn’t received documentation showing that Crane’s office has reviewed all potentially problematic transactions, after news of one surfaced in which a state investment pool lost millions when Crane’s office reallocated assets between it and a local government investment pool. “While documentation of two specific reallocations was provided during the audit, no additional evidence supporting a full review of all potentially inappropriate reallocations was provided,” the late-June audit report said. Laura Steffler, Crane’s chief deputy, wrote in the office’s official response submitted for that report that the office had reviewed all securities lending transactions for reallocation of assets between investment portfolios directed by the office since July 1, 2008, and had already provided all the documentation. “Short of just saying we did it, I don’t know how else we can prove … that we did it,” said Ken Burgess, spokesman for Crane’s re-election campaign. He said Crane’s office offered the auditors access to the full documentation for every one of the tens of thousands of transactions completed under its securities lending agreement since 2008, and the auditors declined that offer. “They said we don’t want all this stuff – we just want you to somehow prove that you did a full review,” Burgess said. “How do you prove that, short of taking our word that we did it?” Silver responded, “That makes absolutely no sense. There are statements, with the allocations going back and forth reconciling the balance. … In my view, either he really does not understand what the auditors want, or he’s deliberately dodging.” Silver, a Democrat, has made her nearly three decades of experience as a CPA a central issue in her challenge to Crane, Idaho’s four-term state treasurer. He has only a two-year degree from a Bible missionary institute, but maintains he’s developed expertise and a track record in his 16 years in the office, which oversees the investment of all state funds. However, recent audit reports have been critical of Crane’s management of state funds, suggesting that Crane made an inappropriate transfer between two funds that cost the state’s taxpayers more than $10 million. Crane vigorously disputes the audit finding, contending his office did nothing wrong and made reasonable decisions based on what it knew at the time. The most recent audit report recognized that new legislation passed this year, backed by Crane, created an investment advisory board that will provide additional oversight of investments by the treasurer’s office. But it continued to call for a review of reallocations since 2008, while the treasurer’s office maintained that’s already been done. April Renfro, director of the Audits Division for the state Legislative Services Office, said, “We just didn’t have any documentation to look at, such as maybe reconciliations of monthly statements between the two pools to show that no allocations were moved. That’s the kind of things we would be expecting to see.” She said other documentation could show whether the office did a scan of all emails to see if there were any directives in emails about reallocations. “That’s the kind of documentation we would expect to see if they’d done a full review,” she said. Crane, 65, was unopposed when he won his fourth term in 2010. He served 16 years in the state Legislature as a Republican representative from Canyon County before he was elected state treasurer, a full-time post that pays $101,150 a year. He also founded and operated an alarm company in Canyon County. Silver, 57, taught accounting at the College of Southern Idaho for five years and has operated a CPA firm with her husband in Twin Falls for nearly three decades. She is making her first run for elective office.