December 15, 2023

By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall

In light of the recent teacher layoffs at Lakeland Community College, we have been asked to provide financial information about Lakeland Community College. We sent a records request, and got the following information for our readers.

1. Morris Beverage’s current employment contract:

No. 3 – Resolution 01-23 Authorizing Chair of the Board to Enter Into Employment Contract with MWB for College PresidentDownload

2. Current interim balance sheet for Lakeland Community College:

No. 1 – Balance Sheet (1)Download

We had a question about some missing information on the interim balance sheet. Here is the correspondence:

LFC Statement to their attorney: In our opinion, the interim statement provided does not reflect the accurate financial position of the Lakeland Community College since it does not reflect all of the liabilities. [missing $70+ million]

Lakeland’s response:

Here is the explanation I [Michael Fisher, attorney] received:

It should be noted that many government organizations in Ohio do not recognize nor report the State of Ohio’s retirement systems’ pension obligations on an interim basis.  With the ongoing impact of market value changes of assets held by the State’s retirement systems, governmental units within the State only receive annual updates on their allocation of State pension systems’ asset and liability changes.  Moreover, generally accepted accounting principles only requires its inclusion for a government’s year-end published statements, versus interim reporting.

Read the Rest of this article at the source here