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Today, July 21, 2026, the City of Marion will officially enter a state mandated Fiscal Emergency, placing the city’s financial heartbeat under the strict oversight of a state appointed Financial Planning and Supervision Commission.
While the Ohio Auditor of State points to multi million dollar deficits, hybrid cash and accrual complexity, and unreconciled books, an extensive technical investigation by MarionWatch.com Investigates reveals the deeper, structural reality.
This external forensic IT investigation was begun by Marion Watch many years ago.
Official records confirm systemic failures predate 2019, but based on an external forensic review of IT configurations, disabled software modules, unrestricted user permissions, and lost institutional knowledge, MarionWatch concludes this crisis is not just a series of accidental glitches.
It is the result of what we term “Silent Sabotage,” a more than 15 year failure defined by administrative mismanagement, restricted audit scopes, collapsed segregation of duties, and the failure to pass on critical manual workarounds necessary to keep the city afloat.
The following article, while damning, only scratches the surface of what our investigation has uncovered.
Some of which has not yet been released.
Marion Watch will escalate this situation as high as needed to ensure that it is seen by the proper eyes, with the proper IT credentials to understand the situation.
The evidence DEMANDS a full forensic IT audit according to financial and IT standards.
THE COLLAPSE OF IT AND FINANCIAL STANDARDS
The external forensic IT observations detailing Marion’s structural collapse align strictly with global governance standards for both finance and information technology.
Under established frameworks like COBIT and strict adherence to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, an enterprise system is only as trustworthy as its internal controls, architecture, and data integrity.
Aggregating disparate bank accounts into a single ledger, bypassing native reconciliation modules, relying on undocumented daily manual overrides, and granting unrestricted administrative permissions to a single user, and other inappropriate access rights are foundational violations of these universal standards.
Our investigation proves that Marion’s deployment of the Tyler Technologies New World ERP system failed on every single one of these fundamental IT and auditing baselines.
The system was not merely misconfigured.
It was structurally defenseless.
This systemic instability is perfectly illustrated by the fact that simply changing a system setting checkbox based on vendor advice altered report totals by $137,000, without any actual accounting adjustments being booked.
Furthermore, investigators discovered that the city’s books and records had not even been properly closed for 2020 and 2021. This meant liabilities and fund balances were never properly addressed, creating a compounding ripple effect across all subsequent financial statements.
The multi-million dollar cash reconciliation crisis was simply the exposure of structural vulnerabilities built into the city’s IT ledger well before from 2009 forward, which Vertias discussed in council meetings.
The New World ERP system only appeared functional in the past because former officials relied on manual workarounds to force balance billing exceptions, but they did not share these workarounds with the incoming administration.
When those individuals left, the failure to pass along these critical processes completely exposed the underlying software calculation errors.
THE INAPPROPRIATE PERMISSIONS: A COLLAPSE OF INTERNAL CONTROLS
Compounding this failure, attached screenshots from 2021 show that a former Deputy Auditor possessed unrestricted administrative permissions across every financial, payroll, utility, HR, and security module.
This level of access violates every known standard of segregation of duties, whether a sitting official and former official, these permissions break the segregation of duties.
It allowed a single user to possibly override payroll, alter cash accounts, modify General Ledger entries, change employee financial data, bypass reconciliation controls, alter audit trails, create or modify other user accounts, and access protected personal information.
No municipal financial system can remain trustworthy under such conditions.
The unrestricted permissions held by the former Deputy Auditor during this period meant that the system’s audit trails, user logs, and security records could not be trusted. When a single user can modify or delete audit logs, the historical record becomes unreliable.
The visual evidence corroborating this, specifically system logs from March 8, 2021, reveals that former Deputy Auditor held active licenses across Financial Management, Human Resources, Utility Management, and Community Development. Most critically, the Override Security panels show active checkboxes granting manual override capabilities for “G/L Distribution” and “Pay Rate,” entirely dismantling the segregation of duties.
The unredacted versions show New World’s unique cryptographic URL.
THE DIGITAL QUARANTINE: FORCED TO COMBINE DATA
Administrative failures to manage software configurations effectively created a practical digital quarantine.
Rather than allowing forensic investigators to dig into the foundational financial records prior to 2019 to find the root cause, the scope of Veritas Solutions Group’s engagement restricted them to the 2020 and 2021 books.
Because Veritas Managing Director Greg Blate and his team were walled off from auditing the underlying pre-2020 data, they could not correct the corrupted data at its source.
Instead, as Blate confirmed to the City Council on July 24, 2023, Veritas was forced to use aggregate journal entries simply to force balance the ledgers and establish a beginning balance.
This operational restriction guaranteed that the true origin of the multi-million dollar discrepancies remained permanently unresolved.
CORE SYSTEMIC FAILURES
UNUTILIZED MODULES, VENDOR NEGLECT, AND THE 99.7 MILLION DOLLAR ENTRY
Systemic neglect pushed the city’s financial reporting into a permanent state of imbalance. Standard IT and accounting practices require strict data segregation to allow for automated, one to one bank matching.
The New World software possessed a built-in Reconciliation Module designed to do exactly this, yet it was effectively disabled. During the July 24, 2023, City Council meeting, Blate detailed the exact software control anomalies that crippled the city. He testified that the reconciliation module was not being fully used because of a catastrophic structural error.
Prior to 2022, nine separate cash and investment accounts were aggregated into a single general ledger string, intentionally bypassing the software’s ability to perform automated, one to one bank reconciliation.
Because the system’s architecture was fundamentally misaligned with the city’s operations, the workarounds used to keep the books afloat caused massive data distortions.
Unofficial workarounds are never acceptable according to global IT standards.
Blate revealed that just to close out the books for 2020 and 2021, Veritas had to create 90 corrective journal entries.
He noted that these entries ranged from a single dollar up to an astonishing $99,717,000. While Blate clarified this massive figure was a gross entry required to reorganize the ledger, the actual net expense impact for 2020 was $213,000, and $1,464,000 for 2021.
Its sheer size proves that the daily operating ledger was completely detached from reality.
When a single user can override General Ledger distribution, alter pay rates, modify hours codes, and finalize template rules, the system’s financial architecture becomes vulnerable to undetectable manipulation. This made the $99.7 million entry even more alarming, because the system lacked the safeguards necessary to ensure that such entries were properly controlled or reviewed.
Mayor Bill Collins confirmed that approximately 80 percent of the Tyler New World modules the city pays for are unused. Wile not yet finalized, this massive failure in resource allocation is financially quantified in Tyler Technologies Invoice No. 045-496026.
The city was billed $145,825.78 for the 2025-2026 cycle alone. Page 1 of the invoice explicitly lists a charge for the “Bank Rec” module—providing direct, physical proof that the city was paying for native reconciliation architecture while simultaneously disabling it by intentionally bundling nine separate bank accounts into a single ledger string.
Official correspondence from Mayor Bill Collins confirms the vendor neglect and administrative disconnect.
In a July 2026 email responding to public records requests, Mayor Collins admitted the city demanded a bill audit in early 2026 due to these unused modules, but Tyler Technologies ignored the request until inquiring about payment months later. A last-minute meeting was scheduled for July 14, 2026—just days before the Fiscal Emergency declaration—proving the administration was still scrambling to untangle its own enterprise billing at the eleventh hour.
THE GHOST CASH LOOP AND VENDOR FRICTION
Our investigation, backed by Veritas’s forensic reporting to the Finance Committee on January 22, 2024, reveals a foundational breakdown where the automated Cross Fund Report completely stopped matching the standard Cash Report.
According to Veritas’s technical findings presented during that session, this produced a reporting gap ranging between 2.4 million and 2.5 million isolated to the FY 2021 processing cycle.
The software suffered from a double hitting cash loop anomaly within the utility module, which improperly modified core cash accounts. Because the Utility Billing module operates uniquely on a modified cash basis, adjustments systematically hit cash balances even when the transactions did not involve the actual receipt or distribution of cash.
Auditor Miranda Meginness admitted that this issue was completely invisible unless an investigator followed a full transaction cycle from billing to payment, as the system was silently hitting cash twice in the background.
Unrestricted permissions and poor IT hygene meant that these overrides could, in theory, be performed without secondary approval, without audit trail protection, and without segregation of duties. As our investigation documents, the GL override interacted directly with the utility module’s double hitting cash loop anomaly.
Because the override allowed cash postings to bypass standard controls, the utility module’s improper cash hits were able to overwrite core cash accounts without triggering reconciliation errors.
This compounded the reporting gap of 2.4 million to 2.5 million identified in the FY 2021 processing cycle.
As Greg Blate confirmed to the Finance Committee, there is not a single person in the city, or even at New World, who fully understands the city’s utility billing accounting from beginning to end.
The only reason it appeared to balance in 2019 was because the former administration manually forced it to work, masking the underlying systemic failure.
The Auditor of State’s most recent audit reinforces these findings by stating that the city’s financial system lacked adequate controls to prevent unauthorized or improper postings.
The audit notes that override activity contributed to unauditable records, unreconciled balances, and deficit fund positions totaling more than $8.8 million.
It also states that Marion’s books are not able to be trusted.
THE PAPER TRAIL: A TIMELINE OF IGNORED WARNINGS
The evidence of administrative suppression, software mismanagement, and collapsed internal controls was not suddenly discovered upon the state’s fiscal emergency declaration. It was hidden in plain sight across months of municipal proceedings. Below are just a handfull of exampes.
July 24, 2023: Veritas Solutions Group presents to City Council, revealing that 90 manual journal entries were required to close 2020 and 2021, one grossing up to $99.7 million. Blate confirms that the system generated ending balance differences upwards of $600,000 on reports that should have been zero.
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
October 23, 2023: Further public proceedings document how the intentional bundling of nine bank accounts into a single ledger string physically prevented the native Bank Reconciliation Module from functioning. The system was so volatile that changing a single checkbox in the software settings altered report totals by $137,000 without booking any actual adjustments. The system’s permissions structure remained unchanged, possibly allowing a single user to override reconciliation controls. The Collins administration advised Marion Watch that inappropriate permissions existed into 2024, at which time permissions were revoked.
November 20, 2023: Auditor Miranda Meginness discloses that the utility management module operates on a cash basis, while other departments do not. This allowed the system to silently execute undetected duplicate cash postings in the background. The state had recommended a system analysis in 2020, but the directive was not properly targeted at utility management until the crisis deepened.
January 22, 2024: Veritas presents the $2.4 to $2.5 million cross fund reporting error. Blate confirms there is a $2 million discrepancy in 2021 strictly tied to the accounting system configuration, not missing cash.
He testified that there is no continuity of staff, noting the former administration was the last time someone could manually force the system to reconcile in 2019.
November 25, 2025: The Ohio Auditor of State officially places Marion in Fiscal Caution, citing unauditable records, a continuous failure to reconcile, and 13 funds showing deficit balances totaling over $8.8 million. The structural vulnerabilities that led to this point were exacerbated by the fact that unrestricted system permissions remained active even after the Deputy Auditor transferred to another city department. This meant an employee completely outside the finance office retained full administrative control over the city’s financial system during former Auditor Robert Landon’s tenure.
July 21, 2026: The City of Marion officially enters a state mandated Fiscal Emergency, turning over financial authority to a state appointed commission until a strict recovery plan is executed.
THE FINAL VERDICT: A SYSTEM BUILT TO FAIL
The transition to Fiscal Emergency status marks the end of local financial control. The state commission will now maintain veto power over city budgets and contracts until a mandatory recovery plan is executed and the 8.8 million dollar deficit is eliminated.
While state intervention focuses on stabilizing the massive deficit, the MarionWatch.com Investigates findings make one thing clear: you cannot fix a financial crisis without addressing the IT infrastructure that created it.
The Silent Sabotage that disconnected Marion’s general ledger from reality proves that a recovery cannot be achieved through simple ledger adjustments while the software environment and internal administrative controls remain fundamentally broken.
The unrestricted permissions and other inappropriate access rights, and full admin access left active long after transferring to a different city department, demonstrate a complete collapse of segregation of duties, audit trail integrity, and financial control standards.
Combined with the mayor’s confirmation that approximately 80 percent of the modules the city pays for are unused, the evidence shows that the system was never properly implemented, never properly governed, and never properly secured.
Taken together, the Silent Sabotage GL override findings and the Auditor of State’s audit conclusions show that Marion’s financial collapse was not caused by isolated mistakes.
It was caused by a structural failure embedded deep within the city’s accounting system.
The GL override was the silent engine of Marion’s fiscal deterioration, enabling mispostings, masking deficits, and undermining every safeguard designed to protect public funds.
This is why a full forensic IT audit is not optional.
It is mandatory.
State observers and auditors have made the right call in recommending that the New World ERP system be entirely replaced, because a city cannot survive on a system that was built to fail.
WORKS CITED (Click Here)
MarionWatch.com Investigates. Silent Sabotage: Marion’s Financial Collapse and the GL Override. https://marionwatch.com/silentsabotage
Ohio Auditor of State. City of Marion Fiscal Caution Declaration. https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2025/City_of_Marion_Fiscal_Caution_2025_Marion.pdf
Marion City Council. Summary of Proceedings (July 24, 2023). https://www.marionohio.us/sites/default/files/minutes/2023-07-24_Council_Minutes.pdf
Marion City Council Finance Committee. Summary of Proceedings (October 23, 2023). https://www.marionohio.us/sites/default/files/minutes/2023-10-23_Finance_Minutes.pdf
Marion City Council Finance Committee. Summary of Proceedings (November 20, 2023). https://www.marionohio.us/sites/default/files/minutes/2023-11-20_Finance_Minutes.pdf
Marion City Council Finance Committee. Summary of Proceedings (January 22, 2024). https://www.marionohio.us/sites/default/files/minutes/2024-01-22_Finance_Minutes.pdf
Alleyne, R. Marion faces fiscal warning after years without full audit. https://www.10tv.com/article/news/local/marion-faces-fiscal-warning-after-years-without-full-audit
Laird, K. City of Marion declared in Fiscal Caution by Auditor of State. https://marioncountynow.com/local-news/city-of-marion-declared-in-fiscal-caution-by-auditor-of-state
Laird, K. Ohio Auditor to declare fiscal emergency in Marion. https://marioncountynow.com/local-news/ohio-auditor-to-declare-fiscal-emergency-in-marion