It took a while – and not inappropriately so – but the Erie County Legislature on Thursday approved crucial new hires in the County Clerk’s Office. At the same time, Erie County Clerk Michael P. “Mickey” Kearns came in for a verbal shellacking. That wasn’t inappropriate, either.
As important as it was to ensure that the Erie County Clerk’s Office is operated efficiently and securely, county legislators served the public interest by first examining the plan to add two new accountants for an operation that is swimming in public money.
Kearns requested the additions to his staff after a scathing audit uncovered apparent and significant thefts. In his 2024 budget proposal, County Executive Mark Poloncarz included funding for two additional accountants. Incredibly, an office that handles more than $100 million a year has none.
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The losses were notable. An audit by Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick showed that at least $114,000 was fraudulently diverted from the Clerk’s Office over a period of 1½ years. Since that audit was made public, the state comptroller and law enforcement started their own investigations, which are ongoing.
No one has been charged with a crime, although Kearns recently fired an employee “based on performance.” He declined to say whether the action was connected to the missing money.
Still, the structural problem was clear: Insufficient oversight appears to have enabled brazen thievery. It’s axiomatic that an office handling more than $100 million in public transactions every year needs an accountant or two.
Kearns wanted the approval more quickly, but he didn’t help his cause by focusing more on how the audit was conducted than what it revealed. What is more, at two legislative sessions, he sent deputy clerks to plead the case, aggravating lawmakers of both parties. As Legislator Howard Johnson, D-Buffalo, previously observed, “If this matter is urgent now, it should have been urgent back in July,” when Hardwick released his audit.
One Republican legislator, Chris Greene, recently said he thought politics was at play, with the Democratic majority dragging its feet because Kearns is a Democrat who has been endorsed by Republicans. Politics allows for some bonehead decisions, it’s true, but Greene offered no evidence of such a motivation and it’s hard to see who it would have benefited, anyway. The only possible losers would be voters.
It’s also true that legislators are not always so diligent in their duties, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been careful in how the county goes about plugging a leak that A) should never have occurred and, B) should have been discovered long before it allowed $114,000 or more to vanish. They needed to be sure the new money would be well spent.
This was a painful episode – for Kearns, for legislators and for taxpayers. Here’s hoping better supervision is on the way.