The NY Daily News, to their credit, isn’t letting the City Controller candidates off without proving their worthy of the job (thankfully, because the Post has utterly ignored the contest altogether). David Weprin and Melinda Katz, when asked about the size of the budget for the controller’s office, didn’t fare very well.
A member of the Daily News Editorial Board posed the question to Weprin, a Queens City Council member, mostly out of curiosity.
“Good question,” Weprin replied.
When Weprin couldn’t come up with the answer, the board quizzed the other three candidates, with mixed results.
“I forgot what the figure was,” admitted Katz, a Queens councilwoman.
Katz and Weprin knew the office has 700 to 750 employees.
Katz added that she had calculated that the average employee made about $70,000 a year but, with the board staring her down, she declined to do the math in her head.
That’s because, for all intents and purposes, Weprin isn’t even bothering to mount a real campaign, and Melinda Katz’s ads are more fitting for a candidate running for Public Advocate than Controller.
Just because these two couldn’t pony up an answer doesn’t mean everyone couldn’t. John Liu, the Asian Al Sharpton, did rather well, as did David Yassky. Of course, both Katz and Weprin defended their lack of knowledge of the office they were running for by saying “leadership and courage” are more important than facts and figures.
When you’re running for Controller.
In the largest city in the country.
Yep. That’s what we have in the year 2009. In 2008 it was “hope and change” instead of “experience,” and now it’s “leadership and courage” over “facts and figures.”
Because, as we all know, leadership and change are really what balances the budget, not knowledge of tiny little details like the budget of the office you’re moving into. After all, it’s not like you have any need to know things like that when you’re on the City Council, right?
Interestingly, Katz’s campaign website pretty clearly points out her duties…
“The New York City Comptroller, an independently elected official, is the Chief Financial Officer of the City of New York. The mission of the office is to ensure the financial health of New York City by advising the Mayor, the City Council, and the public of the City’s financial condition. The Comptroller also makes recommendations on City programs and operations, fiscal policies, and financial transactions. In addition, the Comptroller manages assets of the five New York City Pension Funds, performs budgetary analysis, audits city agencies, registers proposed contracts, etc. Their office employs a workforce of over 700 professional staff members. These employees include accountants, attorneys, computer analysts, economists, engineers, budget, financial and investment analysts, claim specialists and researchers in addition to clerical and administrative support staff.”
Sounds like someone taking that position should know its budget, don’t you think? And not to beat up on Katz, but if she doesn’t know the budget, how is she making campaign promises about how she’ll direct money and manage the funds of the city?
That flub by her was way more than a disregard for a random factoid; it’s an admission that she’s basing her campaign promises, her campaign itself, and essentially a laundry list of other things in this election on… Well… Nothing…
But hey… Leadership and courage, right?