JOAN BARRON Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - The State Board of Certified Public Accountants (CPA) kept changing the rules on Gillette CPA Mark Dorr, his attorney said Monday during a contested hearing before the board.
The latest hearing, the third in the continuing legal battle between Dorr and the CPA board, is expected to last most of the week.
The case has been before the Wyoming Supreme Court, which in April 2001 ruled the CPA board lacked evidence to suspend Dorr's license for 100 days.
The current case involves the board's assertion that Dorr has not properly followed the requirements of a settlement agreement originally entered in April 1999 in response to the board's allegations.
The board at that time claimed Dorr or his firm failed to complete audits for Community Action of Laramie County and the city of Douglas, and also failed to complete a peer review by Oct. 31, 1998, as required.
The CPA board also ruled that Dorr, owner of Wyoming CPA Network in Gillette, could not have a second branch office in Cheyenne without a resident CPA manager. Dorr opened the Cheyenne office in the early 1980s to provide competition in bids for audits of Wyoming state government agencies.
Dorr, who closed the Cheyenne office during the last legal bout with the CPA board, said the board's policy was "archaic."
During the hearing and in the release, Dorr's attorney, Greg Goddard, said the impetus for the case is threat of competition from Dorr.
But Special Attorney General Doug Weaver, representing the board, claimed Dorr violated the settlement agreement "and was dishonest in the practice of accounting."
"But you have to take the whole picture to get it," he added during his opening argument to the board.
Weaver detailed a series of events and communications regarding Dorr's efforts to re-enter auditing, a move that required an independent peer review and a process called "pre-issuance review."
Dorr chose a Colorado CPA, Dennis Oberhelman, for both functions. But board member James Hearne of Cheyenne vetoed Oberhelman as a reviewer and recommended another CPA.
That was one example of rule-changing Goddard cited at the hearing, saying Dorr felt one person could serve both functions and that a clear definition of pre-issuance review does not exist for him to refer to.
Weaver said Dorr also hired a Gillette man who had taken only three classes in accounting to help with an audit of the 6th Judicial District Child Support Authority.
Dorr, he said, in 2002 went to the board of the Child Support Authority and discussed the audit while Oberhelman participated by telephone.
The board wanted an independent reviewer who had not participated in any Dorr audit work, according to the testimony.
In his opening statement, Goddard said the whole procedure is "silly.'"
"There's no reason to be here," he added.
In retrospect, he said, Dorr should have contested the settlement order from the beginning but did not because of the hassle and costs.
"No matter what he does, it isn't enough," Goddard said, "It's a political 'gotcha.'"
Dorr, he said, is smart but "may rub people the wrong way."
David Kreycik, a CPA from Douglas and former board member who investigated the allegations against Dorr, said the board declined to consider his April 28, 2000, request to re-enter audit work for reasons unknown to him.
Any audit work Dorr did after that rejection constituted a violation of the settlement agreement, Kreycik said.