Erie County Executive Slams Comptroller as Incompetent Grandstander

An unusually public squabble broke out in Erie County this afternoon when County Executive Mark Poloncarz issued a press release slamming the county’s comptroller, Stefan Mychajliw, as a publicity hound and incompetent hypocrite.

“As has become a hallmark of his administration, Comptroller Mychaljiw [sic] has chosen to make a number of inaccurate statements that mislead the public and the Legislature,” said Poloncarz in his release. “While this may generate the media attention he so craves, it does an injustice to the Legislature as the purported ‘information’ he provides is inaccurate and will be worthless for Budget deliberations. The Comptroller’s attention-seeking and inconsistent generalizations provide no specific details that can be reasonably reviewed or even debated and in the instances in which he makes comments he deliberately omits key details.”

According to Poloncarz’s release, Mychajliw, a Republican, has falsely accused the Democratic county executive of proposing a 2015 budget with “ ‘a massive increase in spending’ due to ‘pork and patronage’ ” that comes out to around $40 million.

Poloncarz, who served as Erie County comptroller from 2006 to 2011, expressed contempt for Mychajliw’s mastery of even the basics of the job. “[A]larmingly, the Comptroller continues to demonstrate his confusion about basic accounting principles, specifically the difference between fund balance and liquidity,” reads a quote from Poloncarz in the release. “This is not the first time Mr. Mychaljiw [sic] has confused these two elementary accounting principles, and his continued ignorance of them should be disturbing to taxpayers and the Legislature as well.”

According to Poloncarz’s figures, his proposed budget for 2015 comes out to $1.43 billion—a 2.86 percent or $39.7 million increase—however, once the 100 percent federally reimbursed cost of the $6.7 million increase to the Family Assistance public assistance program and $8.75 million increase in sales tax revenue shared with municipalities that Erie County does not keep but is nonetheless mandated to include in its total budget is factored out of the equation the county’s actual spending hike falls to around $24.2 million or 1.74 percent, an increase below the average rate of inflation.

Reached for comment about Poloncarz’s release, Mychajliw’s chief of staff, Bryan Fiume, said that he was shocked and taken aback by Poloncarz’s vitriol. “If there’s bad blood, it’s in one direction,” Fiume said. “We’ve always had a good relationship with the county executive. We’ve never sent out a scathing press release.”

The origin of this dispute dates back to Oct. 1, when, as part of the budget process, Poloncarz gave Mychajliw’s office a projection of 2015 revenue that did not include property taxes. Poloncarz’s spokesman, Peter Anderson, maintains that the law does not require property taxes to be included in the report, while Fiume asserts that not counting property taxes is a risible omission.

Then on Oct. 13, by Fiume’s account, Poloncarz released his definitive budget to the local media two days before submitting it to the comptroller, as he is required to do by law. Poloncarz held a press conference about the budget in his office on Oct. 15, and reporters promptly rushed four floors down to the comptroller’s office, where Mychajliw, Fiume claims, had no choice but to hold his own impromptu press conference prior to reviewing the proposed budget. In was during this media gaggle that Mychajliw made the vague allusion to “pork and patronage.”

“At no point did the comptroller intend to suggest that the $40 million increase was due to pork and patronage,” said Fiume, whose boss is widely rumored to be weighing a challenge to Poloncarz next year. “We were forced to address the budget without ever seeing it.”

Anderson countered by insisting that copies of the budget were sitting in Poloncarz’s office that entire morning. He added that Mychajliw knew the press conference was going to happen and even went so far as to coach reporters to ask certain questions. Anderson also reiterated the charge leveled in Poloncarz’s press release that Mychajliw is a habitual grandstander who seeks media attention at the expense of doing his job responsibly.

“He spouted a whole bunch of things that weren’t true,” Anderson said. “It’s part of his continuing pattern.”

Though Fiume claims that the comptroller never attributed the budget’s spending increase to “pork and patronage,” Poloncarz’s release nonetheless fires back at Mychajliw for the perceived jab.

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Mr. Mychajliw to talk about patronage when he’s filled his office with former Republican legislature staff members who have absolutely no background in accounting, finance or auditing while he is actively trying to terminate and layoff career civil service auditors at the same time.”