Martin Petherbridge, Raleigh’s lead auditor, must have felt like a voice in the wilderness in 2011 as he tried to warn city officials that there were problems with a business incubator in Southeast Raleigh, which was getting a combination of federal and state dollars and grants.
The incubator, called the Raleigh Business & Technology Center Inc., has been through a whirlwind of problems including eviction, money moving around without much oversight – including to an organization founded by the center’s director – and people in its building not paying rent.
The story is simple: An organization got public money, didn’t manage it well – actually, it appears to have managed it with a reckless disregard for the fact that it came from taxpayers – and in the end the mismanagement ruined the organization. Police now are investigating the organization for possible fraud.
Geez. By those standards, three-quarters of the programs that the various levels of government fund should be under investigation.
Not that that would be a bad thing, mind you.
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