FLASHES

Finally, an Accounting
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has slapped another major accounting firm with a large fine. Arthur Andersen & Co. joins fellow Big Six accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand on AG Grant Woods’ list of wayward accountants.

Arthur Andersen has agreed to pay the Arizona State Board of Accountancy $562,000 to settle allegations of wrongdoing stemming from the firm’s 1985 audit of Charles H Keating’s American Continental Corporation and its subsidiary, Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The firm admitted no wrongdoing while agreeing to pay the fine.

The improprieties alleged by the accountancy board dealt with the firm’s audit report on Keating’s companies to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board in May 1986; the firm’s resignation as Keating’s accountant later that year; and its decision to reissue the 1985 audit report when American Continental filed a Securities and Exchange Commission statement in October 1986.

Coopers & Lybrand agreed to pay the state $725,000 in July to settle allegations that it improperly obtained a $1.5 million contract to develop recommendations for Governor Fife Symington’s state cost-cutting program, Project SLIM.

Like Arthur Andersen, Coopers & Lybrand admitted no wrongdoing. Which means that the two firms have paid $1.287 million for doing nothing wrong.

Cardinal Sins
Those public relations geniuses at the Arizona Cardinals have done it again. This time, they’ve offended a group of season-ticket holders–some of them charter buyers–by casting them out of their seats.

Sun Devil Stadium appropriated the seats to make room for a new section for the handicapped. Without it, the stadium could not meet the requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act. None of the uprooted Cards boosters begrudges disabled fans their seats. But the boosters sure do wish the Cardinals had shown them a little sensitivity–and loyalty.

Jim McCoy of Sun City was one of those charter season-ticket holders. His seats were on the 35-yard line, high on the east side, in the shade. When he was assigned new seats, they were in the sun. McCoy told the Cardinals his wife gets faint in the sun. Next, the Cards offered McCoy seats in the shade, but they were on the 20-yard line.

“When I talked to the ticket manager, he said he’d see if he could find something else,” McCoy says. “I didn’t hear anything for a few days, and then all of a sudden I received a check in the mail, and it was my refunded deposit. I was unceremoniously dumped. . . . I would have never, ever given up those seats until I’m dead. I felt hurt, after seven years.”
Ticket manager Steve Walsh says some of the refugees (McCoy wasn’t one of them) expected to be able to bump ticket holders with less seniority.

“I think you’re carrying things to the extreme when you do that,” Walsh says. “If you just extend it on down the line, how many more people are you going to anger over this?”
Another affected ticket holder, Larry Heath, believes the Cards made a mistake by not giving the refugees ample opportunity to upgrade their seats, taking the spots of ticket holders who do not renew. Heath may be on to something, because people are not renewing in droves. The Cards have sold 7,000 fewer season tickets this year than last.