Comments on: Mason and The Mayor

By: upyurs

upyurs — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:08:03 +0000

Thank you all for your comments on the Comptroller, as opposed to Controller. It seems to me that we seem to disagree on this issue. But I commend all of you for your input. It seems that some of you seem that no matter anything to do with government that you feel there is always something wrong or whitewash. FAP seems to always be negative on anything other then Dawn and Cunningham. As long as Lenz, Tony S and HCDO is involved there is no way Mason can suuport them. As for the Comptroller looking at our Budget or Audit and the Fact that our Council went to them and not the reverse alerts them to our city concerns. Why no be the first, they would want to look good?

By: matt_72

matt_72 — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:05:13 +0000

estevens wrote:

This newly formed office is responsible for the following:

Audits government finances
Examines efficiency of government programs
Scrutinizes government contracts
Provides audit training to government entities

For the following entities:

616 school districts
566 municipal governments
216 local authorities and commissions
186 fire districts
85 housing authorities
43 state authorities
31 state departments and other agencies
33 urban enterprise zones
31 public colleges and universities
21 county governments
21 county tax boards
19 county park commissions
18 joint insurance fund commissions
17 workforce investment boards

How much time and effort will this agency devote to taking a hard look at the city’s finances? It is doubtful that they’ll be able to do much more than to review our budget and audit statements.

As I said, a white wash report created by a political hack.

By: estevens

estevens — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:03:21 +0000

This newly formed office is responsible for the following:

Audits government finances
Examines efficiency of government programs
Scrutinizes government contracts
Provides audit training to government entities

For the following entities:

616 school districts
566 municipal governments
216 local authorities and commissions
186 fire districts
85 housing authorities
43 state authorities
31 state departments and other agencies
33 urban enterprise zones
31 public colleges and universities
21 county governments
21 county tax boards
19 county park commissions
18 joint insurance fund commissions
17 workforce investment boards

How much time and effort will this agency devote to taking a hard look at the city’s finances? It is doubtful that they’ll be able to do much more than to review our budget and audit statements.

By: YipYap

YipYap — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:13:45 +0000

upyurs, last time you mentioned the controller was in December and I will correct you again. It’s Comptroller and if your were not being disingenuous along with Mike Russo you would tell everyone that the fiscal 2008 year will be the first year of existence for this newly created office of the Comptroller.

Corzine has recommended a budget of $9.0 million with a recommended staff of 60.

Let’s see how much this office is really staffed up in the next year.

There is no way this newly created office of the Comptroller can do anything year one other than get their bearings, the most that they will be doing is looking at contracts to make sure the law was followed when the contracts were assigned.

They won’t be performing any Forensic Audits anytime soon that is for sure.

Here is their latest press release.

http://www.nj.gov/comptroller/news/080507.pdf

By: strand tramp

strand tramp — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:24:30 +0000

upyours, do you anything about ratings agencies? especially Moody’s? i would direct you to the ratings assigned to sub-prime ABS and a few cdo’s and then ask you what MDY’s rating have to do with fiscal soundness. btw, don’t expect to have access to any mdy’s reports either.
and as matt said, the state is doing a forensic audit? well, then the fix is in!

By: upyurs

upyurs — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:37:18 +0000

Matt 72 you must be FAP. Because you don’t get it either. The Governor appointed a State Controller, which is the first in the history of this state, to do this audit will be the first by any state official. Do really beleive that new State Controller is going to not do the correct thing. His term overlaps the Governor. If he messes up I’m sure the Federal Attorney General will be all over him. Also tell your friend FAP, if this isn’t you, he is wrong with Mason ever supporting Dawn and Cunningham. They have him, Lenz and Tony S,Raia, Amato and HCDO, who would drop them as quick as possibel just like they dropped Raia for Freeholder after making the deal for Raia and Rosenberg to run against Russo and Castellano. Do you think Mason could ever support them with those 3. She would kill herself political?

By: matt_72

matt_72 — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:20:12 +0000

The state is almost as financially mismanaged as Hoboken is, so why would a “clean bill of health” from them assure you? And while the state may look at the books, they certainly won’t be looking at the contracting & hiring practices of the city, the level of nepotism, the staffing levels, the lack of compensation the city recieves for zoning variances, etc….

The city needs to hire a nationally recoginized consulting firm, hold public hearings on the findings of the firm (and release the report to the public) and develop a plan for dealing with any problems this firm finds with how the city conducts its business. The last thing we need is some whitewash report that is prepared by a bunch of political hacks out of Trenton.

By: upyurs

upyurs — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:06:17 +0000

FAP all you do is complain, if you had any idea what is going on maybe you would make a positive statement. At the last council meeting Castellano mentioned that they had a meeting with the New State Controller office who was surprised that a City would ask them to look at their books. Usally it is the State asking to come in. They appeared to agrre to look at the books and the CFO sent them a number of documents they asked for. SO WE ARE GETTING A FORENSIC AUDIT. Also, at the meeting it was disclosed that Moody’s was coming in on Monday to review the rating of the City. If all you can do is complain maybe you, Lenz and Tony S could run for office and see what kind of votes you get.

By: FAP

FAP — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:02:15 +0000

FAP wrote:

shouldn’t the underlying ratings on those bonds show through

Good question.

Since Hoboken currently has no credit rating, with any agency(S&P, Fitch, Moody’s), it wouldn’t. In other words there’s no underlying to show through.

At a council meeting some weeks ago Councilman Cunningham extracted a promise from Mayor Roberts to get a credit rating from one of the major raters. I look forward to seeing what happens with that promise.

By: sanity

sanity — Sun, 11 May 2008 07:03:23 +0000

FAP wrote:

Yip and Sanity I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.

Actually, I was just pointing out how Yip attacked you with the same terms he’s defending Mason.

Red Haven wrote:

It is never a rookie blunder to endorse people because your conscience and deductive reasoning tell you that they would serve the public the best. It is a far better choice than taking the politically expedient way out.

Right, because the current board is truly a far better choice.

FAP wrote:

Plus I’d like to see the council hire an independent forensic accounting firm to go over the books and for Roberts to fulfill his promise to Councilman Cunningham and have the city go out and get a Bond rating.

Umm… Weren’t some of the Hoboken bonds insured by FGIC? Now that FGIC no longer has the AAA rating, shouldn’t the underlying ratings on those bonds show through (provided that Hoboken is rated better than FGIC)?*

*again, PURE SPECULATION on my part, given that I’m too lazy to bloomberg this stuff myself.

Katie_Scarlett wrote:

sanity – I am 99% sure Cunningham is in sales for the bank he works for, and what he sells is their ability to work on munis, but I don’t know that he himself has any actually real first hand experience working with munis. I could be wrong though.

I thought sales side people were that much more familiar with OSs?