WEST HAVEN — Some members of the Municipal Accountability Review Board are out of patience.
West Haven has been under some level of control by the state board since 2017, intended to help the economically distressed city get on its feet and develop systems and processes to become solvent. Some MARB members don’t believe the city has been working quickly enough, and at its recent subcommittee meeting let city officials know.
“You guys have a problem. It’s a huge problem: you can’t control your money, and most importantly you don’t know where it is. That’s even worse,” said board member Stephen Falcigno, former CEO and president of Statewide Meats and Poultry and a member of the Woodbridge Police Commission. “You really need to get your arms around this faster than you really are.”
Although West Haven has reported a positive fund balance in its current budget, some members of the MARB — including Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw — have said the city lacks internal processes and structures as well as internal policies.
The board’s urgency has become more apparent after former state Rep. Michael DiMassa and John Bernardo, both former city employees, were arrested after allegedly bilking $636,000 in federal pandemic relief funding from the city with a shell company. DiMassa had received approval from the City Council to act as one of three people with the authority to manage the city’s allocation of federal CARES Act money; it is alleged that about one month after that December 2020 vote he set up Compass Investment Group LLC, which invoices show received tens of thousands of federal dollars from the city.
In the aftermath, city Finance Director Frank Cieplinski said the city’s finance and purchasing departments don’t have enough people to thoroughly review vendors; he said he relies heavily on the honor system among city department heads that they have done their due diligence.
Cieplinski told MARB board members that some things have changed in the last few months that potentially could catch fraud the next time, but not everything.
“Every time a vendor request comes in, we have changed the form that’s needed. We require additional contact information, any vendor request is gone through when we look at the Secretary of State’s website to verify that they are actually a real business, we take a look at any information in there as far as contacts or managers — whatever to see if those individuals are city employees or in any way related to the city,” he said. “Other than that, we have not changed that process. That would be part of what the new procurement person will bring to the table with his or her expertise in procurement and purchasing.”
The city intends to hire a full-time procurement officer for the purchasing department, which currently has the equivalent of one-half of an employee working in it. On Monday, the City Council is expected to vote on whether it should approve adding two positions to city government — the procurement director and a purchasing specialist. According to documents in the council’s agenda, the two positions are estimated to cost the city about $76,000 for the remainder of the fiscal year, which Cieplinski suggested paying for from excess Payment In Lieu of Taxes funding from the state.
Some MARB members offered suggestions they believe are easy fixes the city could make immediately.
“I agree generally with the notion the finance department can’t assume responsibility for verifying that services have all been delivered: that responsibility does belong with the department head,” said board member Tom Hamilton, CFO of Norwalk Public Schools. “One of the things I’d offer is an additional level of control that could be put in place is purchases over a certain amount could require more than one sign-off, so that would provide some additional segregation of duties if there was any concern about who is signing of on it.”
Christine Shaw, State Treasurer Shawn Wooden’s designee to the board, agreed that it’s “not reasonable” to assume the city has enough resources in place that the finance department can verify all goods and services.
But not all board members said they are patient enough to keep waiting for the city to make those hires.
“We keep making excuses as to why these things aren’t getting done,” said Patrick Egan, risk manager for the town of Fairfield.
When McCaw’s designee to the board, Kimberly Kennison, asked whether Cieplinski could focus on maintaining fiscal controls while giving his “blessing” to someone else to write the department’s policies and procedures, Egan said he did not believe it should take so long.
“The writing is out there. It’s not the first time someone’s had to write policies and procedures for an accounts payable program,” he said.
Kennison said it would be necessary for the city scale those expectations to its government, so those procedures would have to be its own instead of those of neighboring municipalities.
Egan said he did not believe actual progress is happening.
“The conversations we’re having now are the conversations we’ve had for the better part of two to three years,” he said.
