Amador County – Ken Berry and Kenneth Perano filed a lawsuit last week against Amador Water Agency seeking financial report corrections, and restraining orders on spending and intermingling different funds.

The suit does not seek money, other than attorney’s fees and costs, but Berry and Perano seek financial reports related to the collection of “participation fees.” Perano and Berry allege in the suit that AWA violated Government Code section 66013 “by failing to issue accurate and timely reports required by law.” Berry and Perano in the suit “wish to compel the AWA to provide to the public accurate and timely annual reports … with regard to restricted participation fee funds.”

AWA General Manager Gene Mancebo said Monday that neither Berry nor Perano had come to him and told him that the documents had error, and now the attorneys are involved. Mancebo said it was a waste of taxpayers’ money, but held further comment. The AWA Board of Directors has the item on its closed session schedule Thursday.

The suit said Reports recently released by AWA “for fiscal years 09-10 and 10-11 fail to include information about the various Funds as required, and contain errors and internal discrepancies raising serious concerns about whether AWA has properly accounted for and expended the charges maintained in those funds.” It said AWA released a “true and correct copy of the 09-10 Report” on Jan. 19.”

The suit said the 09-10 report identified a total of $2.1 million in “interfund loans from the Amador Water System 2004 Fund but inconsistently describes four interfund loans from AWS totaling $2.5 million dollars in the portion of the report detailing each interfund loan.”

The suit said reports “fail to properly identify and total the amounts expended on each public improvement,” and list jobs “that are difficult to understand as to which improvement project it relates.”

The suit said a $900,000 Amador County Water Development Fund loan was not identified in Reports, though it was identified in the 2011-2012 AWA Budget Debt Service Schedule.

The suit seeks “information regarding interfund loans, including the correct dates, amounts, interest rates and due dates.” It also seeks restraining orders to keep AWA “from transferring moneys from operations accounts into restricted Fund accounts.” It seeks an order for AWA “to restore moneys previously transferred from operations accounts into restricted Fund accounts;” and an injunction to stop AWA spending “restricted Fund accounts for any purpose other than the purpose for which the charges were collected.”

The suit seeks a “breakdown of the fees” to “determine what part of the fees were for Buy-In, Transmission and Treatment.”

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.