Any Plainfield resident with an interest in municipal government would be well advised to take a look at the 2012 "Best Practices" inventory for which the city received a 66 percent score. Based on that score, the city will receive only 1 percent of the final 5 percent of state aid for the year. But someone who follows local government closely might think that even some of the "yes" answers for best practices are dubious. For example, the administration claims that all contracts are reviewed and approved by the corporation counsel and a qualified purchasing agent, but has either been in place since July?
And how about the "no" answer on whether the three last budgets and the 2012 proposed budget are online? South Plainfield, where the city's acting chief financial officer is CFO as well as borough administrator, has its proposed 2012 budget statement online, if you want to see what we're missing. Every municipality has to submit this document to the state, so basically it just has to be scanned in to be online locally. It even includes the state aid amounts (CMPTRA and ETR) affected by "best practices" scores.
Among other answers, the city said "no," it does not publish all salaries online, nor is there an up-to-date assessment of all grant-funded programs. A property revaluation is not being considered, nor is employee time and attendance reviewed. The entire document should be on file in the City Clerk's office.
The Plainfield City Council is supposed to certify Tuesday that it has reviewed the Best Practices Inventory as prepared by the chief financial officer. If the acting CFO is still only giving the city from five to eight hours of his time weekly, can he possibly have the same grasp on city practices that a full-time CFO might have?
As a CFO himself, Council President Adrian Mapp has pushed for proper fiscal practices in the Plainfield administration, but he cannot do more from the legislative branch than advocate for best practices. The administration has been relying on a part-time CFO for most of the year and the latest announced strategy to get a full-time one is to take the search to the annual League of Municipalities conference in November. Meanwhile, the adminstration could also do some soul-searching on its practices involving both fiscal and personnel issues as reflected in the 2012 inventory. Fix the "no" answers and make sure the "yes" answers are truly correct, and maybe things will go better in 2013.
--Bernice
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Save for the mayor, the legislative branch can hold the liars and scammers accountable by removing them from office. Instead they promote them. The legislative branch can tighten controls to minimize their own conflicts of interest and call out members who ethically should be recusing themselves from certain votes. They don't. The legislative branch could extend pay-to-play restrictions to all officers of local political parties. They expressly chose not to. Ordinances can be passed to require reports that detail all miscellaneous revenues received by the city, and the status of all grants applied for or received, but none have been to my knowledge. Board and commission members that violate ordinances or election laws should, at the least, be reprimanded if not prosecuted. Instead, they often get another hat to wear and the abuses continue with no consequences.
ReplyDeleteThe legislative branch is more than simple advocacy. Its hesitation to go the distance leaves me to believe some of the advocates are purely interested in acquiring the power of abuse for themselves and their acolytes, advocacy being nothing more than momentary politically expedient machinations.
Glad to have you back, Bernice.
ReplyDeleteEvery bit of news from this (I am beginning to think) willfully incompetent administration, which allows corruption to fester, is bad. It just keeps getting worse--NO CFO, NO purchasing agent, NO corporation counsel, NO health officer, NO deputy clerk.
Yet the mayor ignores all this, preferring to have last-minute, gaudy, embarrassing, and tacky two-bit carnivals in the 4th Ward that I have received a host of complaints about, and to attempt to pass through the governing body an ill-conceived, unplanned patriotic event supposedly in honor of veterans, wherein she wants to block off one of our main thoroughfares (South Avenue) so that she can further embarrass our city by continuing to foment stupidity with her ridiculous antics.
It truly is time for her to resign.
Rebecca
Plainfield will probably never have really good, hardworking, trustworthy people in these key positions simply because no one with integrity would purposely put themselves in the middle of a bunch of corrupt rattlesnakes.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it law that if a city has a website, the budget has to be online? Oh, I forgot, they didn't know about our f****** mayor.
ReplyDelete