Breaking: Comptroller report faults Doyle administration for diverting State grant funds to Private entity
Does the price of economic development include breaking the law? Well, if you are in Monroe County it looks like it. (Update: in my rush to post I faulted the wrong Republican Administration - these actions occured on Doyle’s watch - I updated the title)
The Democratic legislature caucus is having a press conference about it now.
Check out this Comproller’s report executive summary about funneling state grant money to a private entity.
County officials used COMIDA, a third-party public benefit corporation, to provide State grant funds (to which the County was entitled) to AirTran Airways, a private business enterprise. The County agreed to permit COMIDA to receive $2.5 million in State grants that were intended to be reimbursement payments to the County for a capital improvement project for Airport improvements. The County partially funded the Airport improvements through the proceeds of County obligations. The County did not use the funds for their intended purpose, but instead agreed that COMIDA would be the recipient of the moneys. At the County’s request and with its agreement, COMIDA paid $2.5 million to AirTran Airways, a low-cost airline, in the form of a subsidy. These payments represent an indirect gift of County funds to a private entity. Neither the County nor COMIDA is authorized to make outright cash subsidies of its moneys to private entities.
The entire PDF is available here.
Maggie and her administration disagree, of course, and wrote a rebuttal letter which itself is rebutted in Appendix B of the PDF.
I just heard about this so need time to read more. Meanwhile - have fun.
Oh again from the executive summary.
Furthermore, because the County paid for the Airport improvements by issuing a bond, it should have placed the reimbursement moneys in a reserve fund and used the moneys to pay the outstanding debt that the County originally issued to pay for the capital improvement project, as required by General Municipal Law.1 However, because COMIDA received the grant moneys, the County avoided this GML requirement to use grant money for debt repayment and instead used local taxpayer moneys to repay the debt.
Just taking it as face value - this simply means as the Comptroller reports that the Brooks Doyle administration took State grant money, spent it somewhere else and issued a bond (your Monroe County tax dollars pay the interest) to fund the additional airport work.
I’ll look through a little more closer at the PDF for additional information.
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[...] D&C has quite a good editorial about the comptroller audit which found that Jack Doyle improperly used public money to entice AirTran to come to Rochester. [...]
[...] by Monroe County government (the Doyle administration and carried through to Maggie’s) shifting state money to Air Trans by laundering it through COMIDA. Heck, even with the years of COMIDA tax breaks our economy still rate an [...]