Taxpayers, City Employees Deserve Better
By Dan Murphy
As a former resident of the great City of Mount Vernon, I am saddened to see the continued financial difficulties facing the taxpayers and City employees. For more than a decade, different Mayors and Comptrollers have blamed each other.
Now, one year after being elected, Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard is unable to determine the true financial health of the City she leads because of an inability by the current Comptroller, Deborah Reynolds, to share simple financial data like how much cash the City has on hand and what is the fund balance or surplus?
I trust Mayor Patterson-Howard, and believe that she is an honest public servant. But the problems of Mt. Vernon have become more serious over time. Mt. Vernon has lost its ability to borrow money, through bonding because Bond Rating services like Moody’s have pulled their ratings on Mt. Vernon, in part because there hasn’t been a proper audit of the City’s budgets for five years. And a multi-million dollar problem with Mt. Vernon’s sewers has gone unadressed for years.
The Mount Vernon Democratic Committee met to choose its next nominee for Comptroller. The results were Rev. Darren Morton, 52%; Derickson Lawrence 43%; former Mayor Richard Thomas-5%.
Rev. Morton is the Chief of Staff to Mayor Patterson-Howard, who was entirely in her rights to put up a candidate that she knew personally could perform the tasks of comptroller.
But, while we know and respect Mayor Patterson-Howard from her years of service in Yonkers as the head of the YMCA, we also know Derickson Lawrence for more than 25 years.
Lawrence is a long-time resident of Mount Vernon. He is an independent minded democrat, not beholden to anyone if he were to become the next Comptroller.
Lawrence’s experience at KPMG, one of the Big 4 accounting firms in the country, and the gold standard for accounting practices. Most of all, Lawrence is honest public servant who just wants to help turn around the finances of his city.
Below is a letter that Lawrence sent out to Mt. Vernon residents.
“Mount Vernon residents have grown cynical of the musical-chair style politics of the same people, that are literally delivering unhealthy results. No homeowner deserves to have public sewer backing up in their basement – a scenario that is becoming all too frequent in Mount Vernon, after years of neglect. Today, the choke points are all around us, spilling into the Hutchinson River, and now exacerbated by our comptroller’s inaction.
I am Derickson K. Lawrence, and I am running for Office of Comptroller. In this letter, I’ll share with you why I’m running; what the challenges are; how we fix them; and, why I am best suited for the role.
l am running for a couple reasons. The first is to bring a sense of urgency and context to the fiscal problems that we face. The second is to demonstrate that we can build a roadmap to fiscal solvency.
Now, I sounded the alarm two years ago when I talked about the issue of state intervention or bankruptcy. This was to warn of the potential crisis if no concerted or coordinated efforts were made to address the problems. Unfortunately, here we are! We have multiple crises. Two years ago, the three issues of mounting debts, late budgets, and gridlock, compounded an already unsustainable set of challenges brought about by the comptroller.
So today, Mount Vernon residents are tired. They are frustrated. They are saddened. Most residents are saddened because we just can’t seem to get it together. We are trying to solve our infrastructure problems with our operating dollars – i.e., the 2021 Annual Estimate.
Other cities have the luxury of a capital plan. This is the process where we borrow and pay it back over time. But we don’t have a rating so we can’t borrow. Those are just some of the issues.
The road map, therefore, is to reinstate our rating. Here is my four-point plan. First, I am proud to be the person who assembled and led a group of independent citizens to craft propositions under the Charter Review Commission; and the voters responded overwhelmingly (over 95% voted) for Fiscal Accountability and Financial Transparency. That communication was loud and clear. Moody’s cited lack of financial transparency as one of the reasons they pulled the ratings. Let us check that box. But that is not enough, the other was open audits.
Second, we need the right person to execute. What does that mean? We need a fiscal framework around City Hall so we can ensure fiscal compliance and accountability, i.e., the IDA, the URA, the Board of Water Supply and all the other departments – to ensure that they remain audit-ready. An independent comptroller must chart that course. We are in 2021, yet 2016, 17, 18, 19 are still outstanding.
Third, we need to introduce multi-year financial planning. We cannot continue the silos of one year at a time.
Finally, in a phase 2, we need to digitize the effort in a package that brings us in the 21st Century. That means that City Council has one level of access, the mayor has a deeper level of access, and the citizens have a third–inter-active. And there must be automated reporting to the state and other agencies. We are so far from that today.
Why am I best suited? I have an MBA in finance. And I spent 5 years preparing startups for venture capital firms, and to private equity options for growth. The relevance here is, in that space, the focus is evaluating multiyear financial statements – Income Statements, Balance Sheet, Cash flow; to determine the quality of an investment.
But equally as relevant is my tenure as an auditor with KPMG – one of the nation’s largest accounting firms. This effort involved several independent reviews of multi-client financials to determine GAAP conformity and to assess risks. So, I understand the value of internal controls, segregation of duties, and compliance. I have the broad skills to turnaround the comptroller’s department.
Our beloved City of Mount Vernon is truly at crossroads, where there is no roadmap. We need a resourceful, and seasoned professional with finance and management experience, at the helm of the Office of Comptroller. That person also needs to be an independent (not an insider), consensus builder, and a problem solver, to work with the key branches of government. I have a demonstrable record of success in all three. If you are tired, frustrated, and saddened, I need your support for us to do better.
We can’t win without your support. Voting for the same people gives us the same results,” writes Lawrence. www.dericksonforcomptroller.com
The people of Mt. Vernon will decide who the next Comptroller is on June 22 in a democratic primary.
