Lee Speaks To City Council From The ‘Cheap Seats’

No box seats at City Council meetings, unless of course you’re boxed in informationally. Citizen fiscal observer John Marshall Lee Monday night addressed the city’s legislative body from the cheap seats, without his symbolic snow shovel.

Council members, neighbors and fellow taxpayers, happy to be with you this evening and without a snow shovel. Some of you may remember, it became a symbol for the previous administration of being unprepared for what nature threw at us as a City and government that was expected to care for the citizenry.

In your heart of hearts, that provides genuine concern for those whom you represent, do you think you are performing an adequate responsibility overseeing City activity and specifically Ordinances where you have a unique duty to originate and review regularly? Where are we today?

Federal investigators are alert and questioning City process and money handling at Public Facilities and if my understanding is correct a Grand Jury in New Haven may be part of their process that is to look at instances of possible public corruption.

The Police Department alerted the FBI and the federal investigators are claiming first among all parties to track down the public record. The Mayor, having lost two employees and with a Department Head disciplined, has gone outside the City to discover Guidepost, an investigative consulting firm to help get to the bottom of issues as they surface. However the story from City Hall seems to suggest that the FBI has indicated that the consulting firm can hold up on billable hours until the Feds finish their review.

Why do I raise this story, observed from the cheap seats where I sit with no personal power or position to get special information?

1. I suggest that there is a remedy within our own system though it has had no teeth for a decade. The CAFR has a table of Organization, with a place for INTERNAL AUDIT, a department listed just below the Finance Director that can be used to test the competency, the accountability and the risks faced by the City government itself. When the last two employees were terminated years ago, why didn’t we get some false teeth to go with the gums? If responsibility was transferred somewhere for internal audit purpose, who gets their reports? Today, City Hall rumors talk about “floater” employees who warm the bench in Labor Relations, getting pay and benefits one can assume, who then show up in various departments regardless of the skills displayed or the need of an empty position? (There’s a mess in Public Facilities. Can we get a mop to the Municipal Garage??)

2. “Scrap metal sales” are something of City value that can be bid upon. They used to be. When was the last bid awarded? Who had oversight? Did anyone complain? Failing to have an Internal Audit function in operation, did anyone look to the Office of Accountability and Public Integrity for an answer?

3. The Purchasing Department has seen a lot of attention lately. The City buys lots of stuff through its Operating Budget, BOE budget and Capital Budget. What the “scrap metal” mess has revealed is that the City Council does not routinely get information from the Capital Budget purchases. Can anyone tell me why not? Whether the money to purchase comes from property taxes, fess or other sources and results in a check from the Operating Budget, or whether it comes from borrowed-bonded origins and purchases stuff, why is the Open Budget checkbook report limited? We pay $24,000 annually and I keep asking, how many hits per year justify that expense? And then we find our program provides less features than the State program?

4. Finally, please review the Purchasing Ordinance. I just did over the weekend and find that the process seems to have many more exceptions in operation, than the basic six I reviewed with you recently. Are the rules getting stretched by submitting departments? Who cares? There are powers in that document that are not exercised and regular reports that no one expects to be completed, and they are not. Is this the way to make law or rules and expect it to be followed?

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