The concerned citizens of East Greenbush, New York still have not received a response to the letters they have sent to the control agencies in New York State.
http://davehancox.blogspot.com/2011/09/bureaucratic-shuffle-potential-fraud-in.html
Isn't that too bad.
Dave, I have never worked in the public sector. The situation in East Greenbush is my first exploration into the public sector.
ReplyDeleteIn the private sector we say: "Don't expect what you don't inspect." But in a town like East Greenbush that notion does not apply.
Probably like many small town governments East Greenbush jobs are awarded through nepotism and patronage. The idea of hiring based on merit does not exist. That means any audit, any review, any inspection of anything has the potential to embarass someone in power's relative or friend. It also means that job performance standards are absolutely non existent. In one very simple example I FOILed for a job description that had not been updated since the late 1950's! In another example 19 of 19 ambulance people were receiving illegal state pension credits! In the private sector that would trigger a massive response. That is fraud on a wide scale. In the public sector the town submitted a one page, meaningless plan for corrective action and went back to business as usual.
When you combine those basic elements with an out of date accounting system, laziness, corruption and incompetence flourish AND taxpayers pay the price. In the private sector we say that revenue covers a lot of sins. The same, it turns out, is true in the public sector. However, the source of that revenue is citizen's hard earned money in the form of taxes. And increasing taxes is how less than competent politicians hide all manner of inefficiencies to outright fraud.
My deeper frustration is at the state level. Those mechanisms intended to protect taxpayers from local incompetence or fraud are not effective. I suspect partisan party politics is the reason.
Citizens are heavily discouraged from raising issues. FOILs are denied. The state's Open Government Committee takes months to issue an opinion. Citizen activists are hassled, made fun, their jobs are called. The old saying; "You can't fight City Hall" in the case of small town New York is alive and well based on my experience in East Greenbush. And the state is pretty much useless to boot.
And if you do fight city hall, or at least try to fight city hall, they run you out of town, or black ball you. This is why more then ever someone from the outside needs to step in, but it doesn't seem like it will ever happen. Case in point the rescue squad two bad reports in a nine year period. There has been nothing done to correct the problem and there will be nothing done to correct the problem. Why fix it, if there are no consequences for their actions?
ReplyDeleteDave…..Not only are we dealing with an unresponsive “oversight and control constellation,” we can’t even get timely financial information from the Town itself. The Annual Update Document (AUD) for the 2010 fiscal year was due to the State Comptroller on April 1st. This is an unaudited compilation. It has yet to be submitted. The firm to do the very limited scope audit of the Town’s financial statements was engaged at the April Board meeting. As of this date, it is apparent that the Town officials don’t even have a draft report.
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing new, unfortunately. Last year, under great pressure from a group of citizens advocating for reform, the Town Board engaged the Town’s FIRST EVER certified audit for the 2009 fiscal year. The scope was very limited, and the report was not released until after the election. Very misleading and false reports as to what was in the report were “leaked” prior to the election. When released, it was discovered that there were serious findings related to internal controls.
So now it’s three weeks until the election, and again we have no certified audit or even an uncertified Annual Update Document. A majority on the Board is at stake in the election. Majority management is asking to be retained. But Management has not yet been able to produce any documentation related to its performance for the 2010 fiscal year.
What the hell are we supposed to do? The media appears to be politically fixed. State oversight and control appears to be fixed. These political operations dump mega cash into the election – officially and unofficially. And when the “boss” is asked it he’s worried about legal jeopardy, he’s got two responses – “what are you going to do about it?” and “I’ve got lots of friends.”