Citizen budget watchdog John Marshall Lee in his address to the City Council Monday night urged councilors to cut, cut, cut waste, starting with their stipends. His comments follow:
Tonight is a special night. The UCONN Huskies an underdog at many points this season has fought its way to the NCAA finals. I will be viewing and many of you will too. There is a lesson for us in Bridgeport I believe. People like underdogs who fight against significant odds. Kind of the American way, you know? And people learn lessons from the experience, too.
What has allowed UCONN to play tonight? Several things obviously but I will mention two: tenacious defense played for 40 minutes of each game, without let-up and foul shooting that is off the charts that means when their players are fouled, the points get in the basket 90% of the time anyway.Why do I mention this tonight to you? Well the taxpayer in Bridgeport is an underdog whether you realize it or not. Twenty members of this City Council have not played a full court press about budgets for years. It is as if you follow the coaching of the opposition, which in this case is the administration. And in the course of being on court, you foul the taxpayer. Let me explain.
I am talking to 20 Council members but the following comments apply to 12 of you who were here last year. You have a stipend problem. You have an ordinance that offers reimbursements. You took it under study, were concerned about the income tax responsibility, etc. You tabled the matter, changed the actual process and are acting without legal authorization. And the City Finance office is overseer? Did you realize that? Look at your Agendas, at your minutes, at your decisions. You are sitting in the three-second area, in the paint and need to be called on it. In a ball game, you would lose possession of the ball. It’s a turnover. Do you want to know what the IRS would say about this?
But let’s look at your new unauthorized process where you sign a statement once a year outlining do’s and don’ts two of which are NO POLITICAL PAYMENTS and NO CHARITABLE PAYMENTS and then you get to use your debit card. The debit cards do not show the purpose of your payments, so when a Council person has over 50 Stop and Shop charges in a year, what is a curious taxpayer to make of that? No purpose is demanded as explanation by your process. Hear the whistle?
And last year in the DRAFT final month report of June 2013, look at the Legislative Department, your Council budget. This is money under your control. What do we see? The DRAFT report shows that $5,722 of funds was spent under Other Services (Line Item 56180) in 12 months. Five months later when we received the FINAL report (the first time a FINAL audited report of 12 months of revenue and expense was issued), Other Services (Line item 56180) had swelled to $31,622 although the funds in question had actually been purchased in June 2013. We have found that 55 checks were requested from that account totaling $31,850 to go to church and 501c3 organizations. That is illegal. You hid these items. That is taxpayer money spent with no rules and no votes. You did not meet the requirements you observe for Federal HUD CDBG funds. Why not? Should we ask these organizations to return the money? Lower our taxes. Let people make their own contributions. It has nothing to do with the recipient organizations. It has to do with your behavior. Cut the stipend annual total from $180,000 to $120,000 or less. Cut your Other Services budget from $93,500 to $10,000. You don’t use it anyway.
You are not a good team on defense of taxpayer money. You act as if it is your own money to spend, here and in all of your Council process. We must blow the whistle on that behavior. You foul us. It shows that you either do not know the rules or choose not to follow them. This is lawless. It must stop.
When the budget is presented tonight, how can the taxpayers of Bridgeport trust you in your work? What evidence of OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE and TRANSPARENT behavior exists when you break your own rules and proceed to hide what you have done? Our hope is in the eight new people on the Council. Reform. Open your Committee meetings. Your rules prevent public input and you do not listen. Reform. Your game is not entertaining. You are not helping the underdogs who pay taxes. Time will tell.
So well put, JML! Bravo!
Now, how can a majority of the Council just sit on its hands and do nothing to remedy this stipend issue going forward? How hard is it?
John Marshall Lee, why doesn’t the Connecticut Post interview you and put your knowledge before the City. It is nice you have a regular platform on this blog and you show up at council meetings. The problem is your knowledge is not shared with the masses who could benefit from your willingness to share.
Steve,
What is the CT Post anyhow? The surviving mainstream daily newspaper for this area? What are the demographics for the paper? How are they changing?
Is there a City beat? Do they specifically have investigative reporters? Do many Bridgeport voters (across the City) read what they report? The answers to these questions are distressing I am sure to Hearst management.
As Andy has reported, I provided a copy of my comments to Brian Lockhart as hard copy when he is there or to he or Keisha by email when I speak to the Council. This topic is special to me because the activity I report and can substantiate, are over 50 City checks made out to local non-profit groups requested by members of the City Council, with no public meeting including discussion of public need, with stipend rules telling them POLITICAL and CHARITABLE expenditures are NOT REIMBURSABLE.
So who advised them to take this action? Why did the City Finance office, the supposed guard dog for stipends, respond to the request? Council President McCarthy made more than one request gift of taxpayer money last year, but his largest one directed $3,000 to the Barnum Museum. Another check was sent to North End Little League for $1,000 at his direction. (Great charities, but so are a great number of City non-profits.)
Did any of the checks result in enhanced POLITICAL visibility in a primary year? Were any benefits received by the Council persons, even of an incidental nature? If it looks like an individual charitable contribution how does the IRS look at it? How do the receiving organizations address a thank you letter?
Does anyone see a problem in any of this? If you do, please speak up as there may be other papers in the region that will want to hear what you have to say.
And if you support the action of the City Council members with their unauthorized distributions of your tax dollars, and then their effort to keep the reporting secret, please also write in. Lennie loves solid discussion and the media will too when they wake up to the story. Time will tell.
Steve, I know for a fact John has contacted the Connecticut Post. He contacted Brian Lockhart and Keila Torres with this story, both showed no interest.
The post is not a newspaper with investigative reporters. They write fluff pieces and turn a blind eye to what’s going on in this city.The editors of the Post are a bunch of old guys who live in the suburbs and write stories about their dogs, their suit coats, their freaking kids and the local pawnbroker. But news of what appears to be illegal activity, NEVER.
While I am at it, ask Tom McCarthy why he spent more than the $9,000 his stipend allows.
People reading this post should be asking themselves who is the council person who charged items at Stop and Shop 51 times?
JML–always know your discoveries are well vetted and substantiated before you make them public. This is beyond the pale of appearing to misuse public dollars, no wonder the city council would not reduce their stipend budget to show good faith they were serious about holding the line on tax increases last year. Knowing it annoys the city council members seeing you with your snow shovel, I gotta wonder how they will feel when you arrive with a snow plow, because that shovel cannot dig deep enough or fast enough for my curiosity.
Lennie likes to use the snow shovel picture. Perhaps it is time to put the shovel away. Somehow the actual responsible parties in the City figured out the problems of the winter of 2012-13 and made a long, bitterly cold and snowy winter of 2013-14 better, even though Mayor Finch never got back to the public with a report on lessons learned. Despite premature and enthusiastic use of STATE OF EMERGENCY in the face of nothing on one occasion, snow was dealt with.
What has not been handled in any good fashion is fiscal management. What I report above is NOT WASTE AS OIB TERMS IT. The use of taxpayer money from a line item (Other Services- Not the Stipend Line Item) in the City Council budget with no vote at a public meeting, with the City check writers cooperating in this activity is illegal activity with the administration in collusion with the legislative body.
The Ordinance Committee studied and then tabled a review of the Stipend issue but the City with Council knowledge made changes by instituting the debit card system with its own NEW RULES. There was no room in the debit card program for POLITICAL EXPENDITURE and no provision for PERSONAL CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS. But Tom McCarthy as Council President, the man who is a heartbeat or so at any moment from becoming Mayor of Bridgeport, persisted in using over $30,000 to more than 50 local not-for-profit recipients. That was in a year where there was a Democratic primary upcoming as well as City Council election. What are we to make of this?
And one City Council person not only made use of the illegal charitable window to send checks out, but is also connected with a charity that received such checks. And that person is a Co-Chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee. Who knows right from wrong? Somebody needs to come up to speed, Lennie. This is not merely wasteful activity as you suggest in the heading. It is illegal activity and shows total disregard for taxpayers. What can taxpayers as underdogs do? Time will tell.
All the research falls on deaf ears, people just don’t give a shit. The people of Bridgeport seem content to take it in the neck and the pocketbook by these devious bastards we keep electing. JML wrote an article about the illegal use of stipends by the veteran council people including one who charged items from Stop & Shop to her debit account.
Seven freaking people responded to that article, so I have to believe it’s okay to do illegal shit while an elected official and the public sees nothing wrong with it.
Shame on Bridgeport residents, shame on the media and shame on the elected officials for doing what they are doing. Shame on the FEDS for doing their usual stellar job of nothing.