While life always provides us with frustrating situations, I have been unprepared for the level of frustration I have experienced this campaign season as I run for one of the three contested positions on the Mercer County Freeholder Board.
By Ira L. Marks, CPA
While life always provides us with frustrating situations, I have been unprepared for the level of frustration I have experienced this campaign season as I run for one of the three contested positions on the Mercer County Freeholder Board. Being a Republican candidate in a County with strong Democratic majorities in nine of the 11 municipalities creates an uphill battle from the get go. Couple this with the actions of our County Executive, Brian Hughes, and his campaign team and all Democratic Freeholder Board to undermine my ability to fully evaluate the County's financial situation makes a bad situation even worse.
About five months ago, this all started with the presentation by Hughes of the 2015 Mercer County Budget. The Budget document, as presented by Hughes and the Freeholders, is very difficult to understand, even for a CPA like myself with extensive experience in my chosen field. I was amazed that virtually no explanation on any piece of information was provided.
Was this intentional to keep County residents in the dark?
Contrast this with the way budget information is presented elsewhere . For example, I was amazed at how the Hamilton township budget is presented in such an easy to understand style. Unlike the County, apparently, Hamilton has nothing to hide from its' residents seeking financial information.
So, after reviewing the County document I saw that over $3.6 million in very large, unexplained differences occurred between 2014 and 2015. Naturally I asked the County staff for explanations by phone, email and via an OPRA request. In each of these instances I was rebuffed and I received only about 5% of the information I requested. When I complained to the Freeholder Board their solution was to provide me with 30 hours of audio t tapes to listen to (with no accompanying physical documentation of course) to somehow reconstruct some of the answers I was seeking in this archaic manner.
If you think this is ridiculous, you are correct.
Next up was the 2014 Mercer County Audit- which contains a lot of significant financial information and is prepared by an outside auditing firm. The Audit also is designed to present internal control and other weaknesses in the County financial systems. Somehow a year ago, the 2013 Mercer County Audit was completed-put on the County web-site and discussed at a Freeholder meeting on September 11, 2014. Of course, back in 2014 Brian Hughes was not running for office.
In a Freeholder meeting in either June or July I asked the Freeholders when this 2014 Audit report would be on the County web-site. I was told it would be on the web-site in September. By asking this question, the Hughes administration was put on full alert that I had every intention of reviewing this report, which by the way, is prepared by the auditors in a much more understandable fashion than the County Budget document.
It is now October 16 - past the September deadline - and the Mercer County Audit report has not been put on the Mercer County web-site. Further, either by design or circumstance there are no more Freeholder meetings scheduled until AFTER THE ELECTION.
So, even if the Brian Hughes team decides to put the 2014 Mercer County Audit on the web-site, with no meetings and no visits by the outside auditing firm between now and November 3, I will be unable to review the Audit report, compile a list of questions and get those questions answered in time.
For the HUGHES election campaign, all I can say is GAME-SET-MATCH.
It seems to be an inevitable reality that when one political party dominates a government-whether it be on the local, county, state or national level, the party in power starts to believe that they can do anything and get away with it. Hughes, a Democrat, has been County Executive since January 2004, a period of almost 12 years. During that timeframe he has been flanked by an all Democratic Freeholder Board the entire time. There is very little disagreement as everyone seems to be on the same wave length. As an example, during the last 12 months 710 out of 712 resolutions presented to the Freeholder Board by Hughes have been approved unanimously. I attended one Freeholder meeting this year when it appeared that a resolution from Hughes was going to be denied by the Freeholder Board. The meeting was suspended and someone went to find Hughes in the County building. Of course, he came into the meeting and shot down any thought of dissent.
If this is the type of government you want to keep, I suggest you vote straight Democratic this November 3 for the Mercer County candidates. Alternatively, if you seek government leaders who are smart, qualified and independent it is now time to send a message to our County Executive that you have had enough.
Ira Marks is a candidate on the GOP ticket for Mercer County Freeholder. He can be reached at imarks@newjerseycpa.com.
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