Written by Marion City Councilwoman and FInance Committee Chairwoman Twila Laing’s appearance on The Watchman’s Report exposed a long-standing financial crisis rooted in the deliberate or negligent disabling of core software security controls. A fervent supporter of the Marion City Charter initiative, she echoed officials and citizens that finances are the top driver for the charter, and also identified by Mairon Watch as our top statistical driver of community concerns.
There are many similarities between the issues in Marion’s IT and financial control issues, and those at the federal level as part of official investigations into federal waste and abuse by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Laing confirmed failures, previously reported by Marion Watch, including directly witnessing grave IT breaches (examples: shared passwords, physical access control issues, unauthorized system permission elevation) that violate globally accepted IT practices, and in some cases law. During a critical moment in the forensic audit, Laing identified Cathy Chaffin, then the Service Director (and former Deputy Auditor), as the person who was refusing the audit firm, Veritas, access to the necessary financial database. This further connects the dots of our previous reports on this subject and individual who has now been named by many current and past officials and or employees. Laing fully supports a forensic IT audit seperate from the ongoing financial forensic audit.
These security lapses violate core principles mandated by standards like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and Government Auditing Standards (Yellow Book), information that should be known and reported by any entry-level Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) or IT professional, as these are basic foundational IT principles, and certainly would have been known by the Marion City IT Department.
Marion Watch has documented IT and financial control issues dating back to at least 1983, drastically increasing with the installation of the New World financial software using official city and Auditor of State documents. Shortly after the installation, the Ohio Auditor of State issued 22 citations which included IT and financial control issues.
Laing’s testimony aligns with information provided by multiple eyewitnesses, identifying a central figure who reportedly instigated and insisted on continuing these breaches. This institutional failure to enforce basic IT security directly contributed to the city’s massive audit backlog and the loss of public funds—a pattern Marion Watch calls “Silent Sabotage.”
The Technical Heart of the Crisis: Mandated Controls Disabled
The most acute point of failure remains the city’s financial software, New World, which was installed around 2008. Laing confirmed that the system was fundamentally flawed, with critical modules never turned on, with some not being installed at all. This has been verified by multiple current and past officials and or employees.
This lack of internal controls enabled the crisis by violating multiple state and federal requirements for government financial management:
- Federal and State Mandates for Controls: The reconciliation module and other safety controls are mandatory under established financial standards, specifically:
- Government Auditing Standards (Yellow Book): Issued by the Comptroller General of the United States, these standards require that governments maintain adequate internal controls to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse. The lack of a functional bank reconciliation module is a fundamental violation.
- Ohio Revised Code (ORC): Ohio law requires local governments to maintain records that accurately reflect their financial condition, which necessitates complete and timely reconciliation. The state auditor’s office repeatedly cites governments for untimely bank reconciliations when these controls are missing.
- Duration of Failure: Laing’s information and Marion Watch research confirm that these necessary controls—including the vital reconciliation module—were NOT installed or functional from the installation of the New World software around 2008 until at least 2025. This created a critical, decades-long vulnerability.
Marion Watch Research Confirmations:
Laing’s current experience confronting unchecked financial practices aligns directly with historical findings:
- Failure of Core Controls (IT): Laing confirmed the reconciliation module was never activated. This systemic flaw has been central to the crisis.
- Marion Watch Research: Official council minutes and Ohio Auditor of State documents show the Auditor’s office struggling with New World access issues and disabled modules including the vital reconciliation module as recently as 2008 and 2009. In 2023, the Auditor’s office was specifically requiring the vendor to fix their ability to search by journal entry—a basic function needed to make corrections.
- The High Cost of Incompetence: The lack of controls led directly to avoidable penalties.
- Marion Watch Research: A $154,399 Finding for Recovery (FFR) was issued against a former City Auditor in 2022 for failing to properly remit $1.28 million in income taxes to the IRS (remitting them to the State of Ohio instead). This error was only found months later due to the lack of IT and financial controls such as the non-functional reconciliation module.
- Precedent of Insider Theft: Laing advised that she personally discovered and reported the embezzlement of utility payments during her time as a city employee. She detailed how her supervisor, Brenda Nwosu, manipulated accounts by stealing cash and making corresponding adjustments using old accounts with credit balances. Nwosu was convicted of theft in office in 2015 for failing to post payments to 71 customer accounts and misapplying proceeds from sheriff’s sale checks. Her theft, totaling over $34,000, went undetected for years because the very system Marion’s current administration is trying to fix lacked proper internal oversight.
Laing’s Mandate and the Budget Battle
Laing returned to Marion, Ohio, in 2002 after 27 years away, finding a city deeply scarred by the departure of key industries like Marion Power Shovel. Spurred by a desire to reverse this decay and armed with over 57 years of accounting and financial experience (including prior federal security clearance), Laing took on the challenge of city council.
Her work as Finance Chair was immediately dominated by the chaos of unreconciled books, severe IT and financial control breaches, viewing the financial situation as a “snowball going down a hill” that finally exploded into view in 2020.
- Emergency Budgeting: Due to the severe lack of clarity, the council was forced to pass the 2024 budget in quarterly increments, a move aimed at forcing transparency.
- Austerity Measures: The administration slashed non-essential capital improvements and equipment, focusing strictly on departmental needs, not wants.
- The Cost of the Past: Laing clarified that the administration was unfairly blamed for major equipment purchases (fire trucks, ambulances) delivered in 2024. These items were ordered by the previous council and administration between 2020 and 2022, and the current council was simply forced to find money to pay for them upon delivery.
The Institutional Obstruction and the Path Forward
Laing detailed the political war zone she operates in, where she and the Mayor are stonewalled by the elected Auditor and Treasurer. She stated she was “over the top fed up” with the lack of communication, noting that the Auditor allegedly told her own staff she only had to be in the office “one day out of 90”.This non-cooperation is the main hurdle in the effort to finish the backlog of audits (2021-present), which are projected to take until June/July of 2027 to complete. Laing stressed that getting these audits done is the single, non-negotiable priority for the city.