STEP RIGHT UP…TO PROFESSOR MIKE’S WONDERSHOW! Oscar-Winning Director & Traverse City Film Festival Founder Michael Moore Shills For Money — Yours!
“As soon as we are out of debt, beat the virus, and get the river out of the basement, we will open.”
“What Is The State Of The State, Film Fest?” The Ticker; April 12, 2021
Michael Moore is verging dangerously close to self-parody, as the Oscar-winning Michigan native and founder of the Traverse City Film Festival rattles the tin cup on behalf of the financially floundering festival he founded in 2005.
Back in August 2018, Moore publicly addressed the TCFF’s financial mess, and the departure of Deb Lake as festival director in December 2017.
During the meeting, Moore asserted that “at the end of 2018, we’re going to begin issuing annual reports. We’re going to actually publish on the website not only the 990s (nonprofit IRS statements), but also the quarterly financial statements. You’ll be able to look at what the bank has, and what we have, and you’ll be able to see everything. That’s the way it’s going to be from now on.”
Moore also claimed the festival had ordered a forensic audit of its finances for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2018. (A true forensic audit, and not just an audit of financial statements, can cost upwards of $35,000.)
But, with the exception of its 2017 nonprofit IRS Form 990, the TCFF has failed to provide the financial disclosures Moore promised nearly three years ago.
But never mind Moore’s unsupported assertion that Festival’s debt has ballooned and its “auditor came in and discovered a whole bunch of other bills that had not been entered, as well as some other bills that people had not even submitted” and just send him your money.
The most recently-filed TCFF Form 990, excerpted above from the report filed on November 16, 2020 for the tax year ending December 31, 2019, (not available on the TCFF site) is frustrating in its lack of sufficient key details: for example, salaries paid to key employees and a list of independent contractors that received more than $100,000 in compensation.
When pressed, Moore insisted he had to wait for the “right audit, the right CPA, the right people.”
So does that mean Traverse City’s DGN (Dennis, Gartland & Niergarth), a CPA firm that issued the 2018 and 2019 reports, is on the verge of replacement?
It wouldn’t be the first time Moore played fast and loose with the truth.
Or the last.
