There has been changes made at the Florida Boxing Commission as Executive Director Thomas Molloy has resigned from the position and the new interim director is Cynthia Hefren.
The announcement of the change was announced yesterday by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Along with announcing the change with the executive director, the commission will implement improvements to the industry, which includes a plan to automate license renewals and increase their standards of accountability for post event tax collection.
“Protecting the integrity of our service to Florida’s taxpayers as well as the safety of those involved in regulated boxing and mixed martial arts events is a top priority for our Department,” said Ken Lawson, Secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. “I am confident in Cynthia’s commitment to excellence, and I am proud to have her in a leadership position with the Florida State Boxing Commission.”
Also, the current assistant executive director has be reassigned due to an ongoing audit by the Department’s Inspector General.
During the 2012 Legislative Session, there was a change the fee collection structure for the commission. This led to a work group and how the commission could adjust to meet the new statutory requirements and that work group uncover a couple of post events irregularities that perhaps the full revenue had not been collected.
Upon getting this information, a full audit was started and review all the business practices and see what they could do to improve the commission. The audit is what led the commission to name Hefren as the interim director and the audit is still going on.
Hefren talked to TheMMAReport.com today about the future of the commission and what changes are being made.
“We are going to focus more on the business process,” Hefren said. “We are going to be looking at automating some of the applications. We are really concerned with how we collect revenues. We want to make sure we are very thorough with that, so we are going to be looking post event tax reports. Again, looking at the business practices, safety is of course a concern and than we are responsible with our revenues.”
Along with the change with the executive director, the roles of people who work for the commission will change as well. Tim Vacarro is the Deputy Secretary of Professions and he explained to TheMMAReport.com what will be expected from the executive director and the assistant executive director.
Vacarro explained that previous director (Molloy) expertise was in the field and that they want to executive director to be more concerned with the administration part of the job.
“We learned with the audit that we needed to focus more on the administrative side of what he do,” Vacarro said. “So we thought that it would be most beneficial to the commission office that we had an executive director who was able to focus on administrative, business and financial process and then have an assistant executive director, who will be responsible for the safety and field work.”
The full audit report is scheduled to be released in mid-November and TheMMAReport.com will monitor the changes with the Florida Boxing Commission.