Stark Irresponsibility

To the Editor:

In the April 11 issue of the New York Post it was reported that Martha Stark, the Commissioner of the Department of Finance, when asked about the City Council budget deception, responded that it was not a problem because that is exactly what our budget and our system is set up to do. This statement by Ms. Stark is absolutely shocking.

An adopted government budget serves two purposes: 1) it is a notice to the public of what their tax dollars are going to be spent on, and 2) it is a legal authorization to spend that money as stated. Since the original appropriation at the City Council was based on a lie, the resulting payments from that appropriation had no legal authorization. Those payments were a misappropriation of public funds.

In addition to her responsibilities as Finance Commissioner Ms. Stark has been appointed by the Mayor to sit on the boards of four of the five city pension funds. She is the chair of two of those funds, the New York City Employees Retirement System and the Teachers Retirement System. As such she make decisions on investing $120 billion in pension assets and adopts investment expense budgets totaling over $400 million a year. She also votes on the administrative budgets of three of the funds totaling over $100 million a year.

Ms. Stark also participates in authorizing non-transparent annual grants of over $3 million from the pension funds to the Comptroller's Office to cover some of the Comptroller's personnel services and other-than personnel serves expenses for investment operations.

Even though she is an attorney, Ms. Stark appears not to have a good grip on proper budget procedures and the impact of filing a false government document. Considering her financial responsibilities and the fact that she almost became the State Comptroller, the Mayor should consider sending Ms. Stark back to school for some basic accounting courses. He might also set some minimum financial experience requirement for the position of Finance Commissioner for the City of New York.

JOHN J. MURPHY

Editor's note: Mr. Murphy is the former Executive Director of the New York City Employees Retirement System. He was forced to step down by the NYCERS board led by Ms. Stark because of what was deemed an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.