Ex-budget director Joseph Passafiume credited with finding mistake

All I can say to Joe is Great job! and Thank you.

Iannello’s law is stretch at best and that is the reason it will go no where. If they want to reverse this and allow the county executive to reach in and yank out legislature’s patronage then I say let’s do it.

Iannello said….

“We are held accountable for the financial position of the county,” Iannello said. “Yet how can we be held accountable if we are not made aware of the spending?”

You are? How can we hold you accountable when you cover up all your patronage? If the shoe fits wear it and it certainly fits in the legislators case.

Ex-budget director Joseph Passafiume credited with finding mistake
County recovers $7.5 million from state error on sales tax

When he found the error, Joseph Passafiume was earning just $1,000 a month working for Erie County under a controversial, under-the-radar contract.

Passafiume examined a spread sheet he had created and realized the sales tax income flowing back from Albany didn’t add up.

In April, he phoned an official with the state Department of Taxation and Finance. It seemed the state officials were not computing Erie County’s higher sales tax increase correctly.

So in May, the state sent the county $7.5 million more in sales tax than in May 2006.

Passafiume’s co-workers are giving him pats on the back and credit for perhaps $6 million of that $7.5 million surprise.

For a return on investment, that’s around 1,000 percent for an employee on a six-month, $6,000 contract.

Passafiume is convinced that state officials would have found their error eventually.

“But there’s a time value with money,” he said. “Getting the money now is better than a year from now.”

Passafiume, 57, is not crowing. He had to be persuaded to be interviewed for this article. Thirteen years ago, he was president of the Government Finance Officers Association in New York.

But in recent years, he has been a pinata, during his service as Erie County’s budget director through the financial meltdown and during his post-retirement return to the county’s employ.

Unwilling to relax, Passafiume this year returned part time to research financial questions for the county budget office. His contract involved too little money to require the consent of the County Legislature or the county’s state-appointed control board, and it all unfolded rather quietly.

When the contract came to light, several legislators cried foul because it smacked of cronyism. County Executive Joel A. Giambra had rewarded an old friend on the taxpayer’s dime, they complained, and proposed a law that would help lawmakers police that sort of thing by letting them cancel contracts signed by county executives.

The proposed law is dead for this year. It has been rewritten a couple of times after being panned by people inside and outside the government as both loosely written and too strong.

Regardless of its wording, it needs the consent of the county’s voters because it would alter the balance of power between the executive and the Legislature. There now is too little time to get it on the ballot for November.

The county’s Board of Elections needs to know by Oct. 2 if it must place a referendum on the ballot for the Nov. 6 general election. When the law was not approved at Thursday’s Legislature meeting, it became too late to get it to Giambra — for a 30- day review and another public hearing — and then to the Board of Elections by Oct. 2.

“This local law wasn’t personally against Mr. Passafiume,” said a chief sponsor, Legislator Michele Iannello, DKenmore. “He was an accredited budget director. The problem is, we go back to the administration and their process of circumventing the Legislature.

“We are held accountable for the financial position of the county,” Iannello said. “Yet how can we be held accountable if we are not made aware of the spending?”

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