The Office of the State Comptroller, an independent government agency tasked with tracking government corruption, fraud, waste and abuse in New Jersey, is facing organized pushback from county officials who are demanding state lawmakers rein in its authority and “bullying” tactics.
The New Jersey Association of Counties sent a letter Tuesday asking state Senate President Nick Scutari, D-Union, to curb comptroller power and establish procedures that could challenge the agency’s findings.
The association “is respectfully requesting the State Legislature to independently review the manner in which the Office of the State Comptroller conducts its investigations of local governments and levies accusations of wrongdoing through social media, the press, or other means without due process of the law,” the letter read.
Kevin Walsh, the acting comptroller, said in a statement he welcomed a public hearing to discuss his office’s work.
“We are proud of the work we are doing to protect taxpayers. Our role is to go where the facts lead us, then draw conclusions based on those facts and the law,” Walsh said in a statement to NJ Advance Media late Thursday. “We know that doing that work effectively means sometimes we will upset powerful people. That’s why the office is independent and should remain so.
Walsh argued that the criticism had more to do with entities of power not wanting a watchdog.
“So far none of the counties has pointed out any factual errors in our reports. It seems their complaints have more to do with their discomfort with the transparency and accountability that our reports bring.”
The resistance comes in the wake of a multitude of blistering releases from the office detailing allegations of fraud from multiple counties, including Essex, Hudson and Union.
Last week, the comptroller issued a report questioning how Essex County spent COVID-19 funding. One county employee was paid $130,000 over 11 months, yet the county health officer didn’t know who she was or what she did, according to the report. And at least eight workers paid to work in the vaccination program were also full-time employees of other government agencies at the same time.
Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo called the comptroller’s findings “unbalanced and unfair.”
“His findings amount to nothing more than a ‘do as I say, not as I do gotcha’ report pointing out issues with just a very small fraction of the funds spent by the county fighting COVID,” DiVincenzo said.
John Donnadio, the nonpartisan county association’s executive director, said his members unanimously endorsed sending the letter to object to the Comptroller’s “bullying” tactics. He said Walsh’s reports and “sensational” press releases do not reflect the counties’ “good faith disagreements with the facts and the law.”
The association is not seeking to abolish the Comptroller’s office, but believes state legislators ought to consider imposing “guardrails” on its authority — perhaps by introducing a third-party review of the findings, Donnadio said.
“We are alarmed by the manner he has come after local government without regard to facts or circumstances and without regard to due process,” he said.
Donnadio also questioned Walsh’s decision to release a YouTube video last year criticizing municipal finance officials.
“Did you know the Office of the State Comptroller audits and investigates local governments? And when we do, we often find staggering waste. A big reason why? The Chief Financial Officer is not doing their job,” Walsh said in the video.
The comptroller and the association have been at loggerheads before. The Legislature has been working on a controversial bill that would restrict the amount of public information the government has to hand over through an Open Public Records Act or OPRA request.
“I fear that if documents are harder to get, we will get less transparency and that will lead to more corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse,” Walsh said during testimony at a March hearing.
The county association supports the bill, while Walsh said it would invite more corruption.
Donnadio called out Walsh for criticizing the bill while seeking a change to the comptroller office’s regulations that would exempt them from providing documents to the public about its work.
Walsh responded that the exemptions were focused on protecting the identities of whistleblowers.
“We are not exempting ourselves from OPRA,” he said. “We have a duty to protect the confidentiality of our investigations, including tips that we receive.”
During the legislative hearing on changing the Open Records Act, he credited Jersey residents with being a part of some of the agency’s most impactful investigations.
“The bill that I read does have a provision in it that permits the government to sue residents,” Walsh said during his testimony. “I’ve been with the Office of the State Comptroller for about four years now — and some of the best tips we get come from New Jersey residents who file OPRA requests, get those documents, especially from local government entities, and share those with us with a tip where they think that something has gone wrong.”
A spokesman for Scutari, who is also chairman of the Union County Democratic Committee, said the senate president was reviewing the letter and declined further comment. Gov. Phil Murphy’s press office did not respond to a request seeking comment.
The move also came as the state was criticized by good-government advocates for changing the law governing the campaign finance watchdog agency, the Election Law Enforcement Commission.
Walsh is an acting state comptroller and hasn’t been confirmed by the state Senate for years due to a tradition known as senatorial courtesy, where legislators from a nominee’s home county and legislative district must sign off. It has been cited as a way for legislators to block officials they have a distaste for.
In response to the criticism of Walsh’s office, Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, the New Jersey Long-Term Care Ombudsman, offered praise for the Comptroller’s work as head of the Medicaid Fraud Division investigating nursing homes.
The Comptroller’s office has urged the state to deny Medicaid funding to the nursing homes with the longest record of poor performance based on the federal 5-star grading system and has suspended the worst operators from the Medicaid program.
News of the letter was first reported by Politico.
“Kevin Walsh and the Comptroller office are taking a bold new approach to this issue. This type of innovative thinking is critically needed in the face of corporate and private equity ownership of New Jersey nursing homes,” she said.
NJ Advance Media staff writer Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
Jelani Gibson is a cannabis and politics reporter for NJ.com. He can be reached at jgibson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X @jelanigibson1 and on LinkedIn.
Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at X at @SusanKLivio.
