City Newspaper Archives - 12/2006
COUNTY: Water Authority audit delayed
Published by Krestia DeGeorge on Dec 06, 2006
Remember that second audit of the Monroe County Water Authority? The one in which State Comptroller Alan Hevesi was going to address "the authority's policies and procedures to address conflict of interest issues in authority contracting"? The one that was going to be released by this fall? It's not.
A spokeswoman for the Comptroller's office confirmed to City Newspaper last week that the audit wasn't going to make deadline.
"Based on current scheduling, it's looking like it's probably going to be early 2007 when that final report is done," says spokesperson Jennifer Freeman.
But don't blame the delay on politics, or the recent campaign, or even on Chauffeurgate, Hevesi's own personal scandal.
The delay is strictly the function of bureaucratic slowness, says Freeman.
"It's just administrative stuff: getting it finished, finalizing things," she says.
The first audit was bombshell enough. It found that former Executive Director John Stanwix and five other former employees received lavish benefits to which they weren't entitled. The audit sparked public outrage and shook up the way the authority conducts its own business. But there've been no allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Will an audit of the authority's contracts change that? And even if it does, will Hevesi's office, still tainted by the Driving-Mrs.-Hevesi episode, be taken as seriously this time around?
