After my blog about municipal audits and their relationship with pay to play in New Jersey, I received an interesting phone call. An influential state legislator who shall go nameless reached out to me, scolding me for "going after" Plainfield's audit firm.
It's as if he wanted to confirm my problem with the way Plainfield selects its auditor. Clearly his constituent for this phone call was the audit company and not the taxpaying citizens of Plainfield. That's the problem in a nutshell. The interests of the few come before the interests of the people.
For the record, I have absolutely no problem with the work of this audit firm. They have always answered my questions about the annual audit and budgets in a professional manner.
I do have a problem when a local political leader who does a good deal of fundraising calls to pressure a Councilman simply because that Councilman is advocating a position for limits on pay to play. I have an even bigger problem when that state legislator admits to me that he has received contributions from the very same audit firm I mentioned in my recent blog.
Let me be very clear: my problem is not with the audit firm. They are in the same boat as all New Jersey audit firms serving the public sector. My problem is with the few legislators who get the benefits of pay to play at the expense of the citizens of New Jersey.
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4 comments:
Your honesty and lack of filtering in how you observe things is very refreshing. Also, probably the reason you get no assignments from the City Council. You go GUY!
I am clueless, who is that"influ- ential state legislator". Could he be the same person who used his influence to save Plainfiled's hospital? Or is he the same person who managed to prevent some group house from settling in Plainfield. Too bad you didn't act on that problem.
On Jerry Green's blog, he writes about "Group Homes" and is critical of you for not "stopping" the sale of private property to a not-for-profit company. FYI, Mr. Green sold property at 1148-1154 on June 29, 2008 for $745,000 to the Union County Improvement Authority. Thus, Mr. Green's property has been off Linden's tax rolls for over a year and that property will continue to be non-taxable once the Morning Star project is complete. What hypocrisy!
^meant to say the Assemblyman sold his property on June 29, 2007, not 2008.
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