Oroho on budget committee challenging “distressed cities aid”

      SPARTA (3/28/08) – State Senator Steve Oroho (R-24) is among five Republican members of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee demanding that Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria come to the appropriations committee hearings on April 7 prepared to explain the program known as the Distressed Cities Aid and how and why the program ballooned from $38 million six years ago to $153 million in the current state budget.  The program also is known as the Special Municipal Aid Program.

     In a letter to Doria the legislators are requesting that all staff members who have any knowledge of the program come to the hearing with him.

     Spending under the program, also known as Distressed Cities Aid, has ballooned from $38 million just six years ago to $153 million in the current budget. Yet it still serves just a handful of towns, said the letter to former Democratic Senator Joseph Doria, now commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs.

      Among the questions the legislators intend to ask are why other municipalities with fiscal problems don’t try for the funds.  Is it because there are no written regulations for applying? Can DCA explain the procedures it follows in making grants. Even more outrageous, according to the legislators, the DCA says it has no documents detailing how decisions are made to award the grants.

     “Governor Corzine proposed funding this mismanaged program that benefits a handful of mismanaged cities at a level that is more than $100 million higher than just six years ago -- even while he proposes to eliminate aid to hundreds of better-managed small towns whose aid has been basically flat over the same period,” the letter says. 

      Doria, who had already been scheduled to testify before the budget committee on April 7, was not the DCA commissioner when hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money was awarded under a veil of secrecy.

      The other members of the committee are Leonard Lance, Anthony Bucco, Philip Haines and Kevin O’Toole.  They want to question staff members with direct knowledge of how this money was dispensed and just what, if anything, taxpayers got for their money.