Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning. You'll finding out with Pete and the Poe Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Peter and I'm the poet Gold.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And we're on the air this morning with Dan aimm blabbed.
And before we get to Dan and his run full
control of Dutchess County, we're going to go right to
the poet Goal for her weekly poem prayer incantation. Gol
please let it roll.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You got it, Peter. This morning, I'm going to do
one Land. We're always making up stories about us and them,
Them and us. Lives appear distant, some divided by fences,
not quite within reach, misunderstood. Are we losing sight? We
exist on one land.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
One land, one spirit, and in the spirit of human beings.
We are luckily enough to have elections in American Dutchess
County and Dan, you're running for controller. Not everyone knows
what a controller is.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Explain that, sure, yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I when I first ran for office last year in
the special election, I was surprised at how many people
weren't familiar with the office of the Controller. I had
to basically before introducing myself to voters, I had to
introduce what a controller was and what a controller is.
It is the financial watchdog for the county. Technically, it's
the chief auditing officer according to the charter, and the
(01:12):
responsibility of the controller is, well, you know, to pay
all the bills and audit all of the payments to
make sure that you know, all of the payments that
we're making are appropriate and done appropriately. And we also
have a function where we can do reporting in our
office where we're overlooking you know, we're looking over larger
scale projects like capital projects and things that we might
(01:33):
want to audit or dig into a little deeper where
we can make findings and recommendations to the county government
to improve their financial operations, but also doubly to inform
the public about what's going on in the county government.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And that position is a non partisan position, correct, I
consider it?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So? Yeah, okay, I mean you're a Democrat.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
I'm a Democrat and Working Families Party candidate. But I
can tell you doing this work for many years, a
couple of decades now, there's no Democratic or Republican way
to make sure two numbers miss.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
You know.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
What I think you really need to have in this
position is not somebody who subscribes to a certain ideology,
but you need to have somebody who understands the work
and somebody who knows what they're doing and had I
had twenty years of experiencing government finance before I got
into the Controller's office in January.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
What were you doing prior to I used to work
in New York City Department of Education.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I worked there for fifteen years.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Actually, yeah, I was there for three mayors and five
or six schools chancellors.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It was.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
It's a tough environment in New York City, but I
had a lot of success there. I was the chief
operating officer for the Division of Teaching and Learning, which
at the time was the largest division division in the
Department of Education, and they had a budget as big
as Dutchess Counties. Wow, So we had some experience managing
big budgets before.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I mean, teaching and learning the only things to count
in the education system, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Education, well, with that division dealt with was everything that
was school facing, whether it was curriculum, teacher training, career,
technical education, any of those things.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And I don't know if we mentioned that. Do we
mention that he's the current control.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Right, that's right? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
I was elected last November in a special election for
a one year term and started in January.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And that was Robin Lois, the former controller. She got
a different job in the States. She's actually a very
high upstate official at this point, and she was terrific
at her job and in Dutchess County. And so when
she got I don't know if they call it promoted
(03:38):
or appointed or what story was, but she was on
the show several times.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Right, and then she didn't she didn't run for that position.
I think she was appointed, right, all Right, what I
just out of curious. I'm always curious, what's the trajectory
that brought you to this field in your life.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
I think, like a lot of people, you kind of
stumble into something and then you find what you like,
you know. I went to school to study political science,
and by the time I left college, I fancied myself
a writer and a poet. But I came back reality
hit for me a little bit when I moved to
New York City and I needed to pay rent. But
(04:18):
I got a job at Goldman Sachs. I had a
job at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I found myself really
comfortable in that environment, and I had a few other jobs,
kind of doing project management work with a heavy focus
on financial operations, and I felt like that was the
kind of work that I enjoyed doing. But I was
also kind of discovering about myself that profit wasn't really
a motivator for me. So I went into public service,
(04:39):
went into the New York City Department of Education.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's always interesting when when you find people. Okay, yes, that.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Was the shortest, most informative, exciting. I mean, if you're
looking for an economical person, you have the economy of
language going for you.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Demonstrated absolutely. I was my train of thought. So you
take it away, Well, it's going to come back to me.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I'll have a tri But you just brushed by the
profit was not a driving you. You had someone that right.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
No, I was going to say, I always uh find
it a kid when someone says profit is not the
motivation for me, but but public services, because I always
feel that that if you, you know, if you take
care of the money to go take care of itself,
you know, to a certain extent, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
You know what I I remember, I remember when I
came to this conclusion. It was so I was working
in product development and we were doing all these educational texts,
and we signed off and we got them delivered to
the client. It was a school district somewhere, and it
was a big money deal. And I remember at the
end of the night the sales team coming together and
toasting and they were doing tequila shots and I was
(05:47):
and I was in the room and they toasted and
they said for the kids, and I just kind of thought, like,
that's that's not really why we're here. You know, we're
not We're not here for the kids. We're closing a
big deal about quite a few hundre of thousands of
dollars here. And you know, I found a position at
the New York City Department of Education, and I really
thrived there. And I found that, you know, on a
(06:09):
on a public sector salary, that I could live on that,
and I could have a family with that, and that
I didn't need more than I had, And you know,
I had been through a lot in my personal life
and was ready to give back, and it all just
kind of made sense for me.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You know, that's again a lot of precision in that language,
and it's almost contradictory. I mean, one of the things
about money is that it has an adjective quality. I mean,
you know, some people it might be not susceptible to it,
and you'd be one of them, it seems. But it's that,
(06:44):
you know, money is such a dominant part of our culture,
and on a personal level, we've all had a whiff
of greed, and when you notice that's not for you,
it's freezer to do tho.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
To stop chasing dollars, you know, and to just enjoy
what you have is a real blessing, right.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I always say that people will, you know, I try
to bring into people's attention that you will give up
on money. You know, people will get to this place
where they'll leave their job, but they'll complain about it,
I don't have enough money, but they'll they'll quit on
money if something doesn't go right for them, if they
don't feel right, you know. So it's also a very
emotional parallel when you're trying to make a living for yourself,
(07:28):
but you'll leave it on the table if you don't
feel right about if someone has treated me or just
respected me. It's like, yeah, but did you say to
pay your bills? Yeah, but that doesn't matter, I don't
you know. It's interesting, what's the.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Saying, if you find a job you love, you'll never
work a day in your life, right right, Absolutely, a
bit of that too.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
But you would imagine, you know, people around money, you know,
you know, if you work on Wall Street, money is
a big deal, and excess money is actually the name
of it. I worked on Wollship for five years and
it's the only time I ever expel greed in myself,
you know, because you don't Greed is not an emotion
(08:04):
you can have until you already have too much. You know. Yeah,
you can be cheap, you can be frugal, you can
be whatever you want, but when you have too much,
you are in danger of being greedy. The comparison is,
you know, you're not going to get drunken like as
you drink the gin. I mean, and when you do
(08:30):
drink the gin, you don't have a choice of being
drunk or not. You get drunk, and so uh. In
a public official, you know, in public service there is
a way of putting. But in an elected public official
whose job it is to be sober around money, that's
a very important quality that you're somehow inoculated against greed.
(08:55):
And your resume seems to indicate you are inoculated against greed.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I think so I suppose so.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
I mean, my wife and I we have everything that
we need, and our kids are happy and have everything
that they need. And what more do I need? More
of Amazon boxes showing up at the door with stuff
I don't need?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Right, right, right right? You know, I think the storage
industry is sort of like a huge industry in America.
It's such an example of excess, sure is you know, Yeah,
if you're just tuning in, you listen to Finding Out
with Pete and the Poet gold and I'm the poet Golden.
We're here with Dan Iimar Blair, Dutchess County comptroller, who's
(09:35):
also running for re election.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And give me a sense of what kind of projects
you're looking at in Dutchess County currently you're looking forward,
where would you be paying special attention?
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Sure, So, the areas where we would normally pay special
attention would be large capital projects, you know, like big
things that we've purchased buildings or construction projects. We would
look at audits where maybe we have a change in leadership.
So if there's a new department head and you know,
a new commissioner in the county government, that's a good
time to do an audit because they're coming in and
you give them, you know, kind of findings and recommendations
(10:12):
of ways of improving things in their in their department
as they're inheriting it. For example, when the district attorney
got into office, Anthony Parisi, he was the first new
district attorney for quite a while, so he reached out
to the controller a different party, you know, and he said, hey,
can you please audit me, you know, let me know
what I need to improve over here. That's the approach
that I take to the work of the you know,
(10:34):
of these types of things there. And there's some other examples,
of course, but I have been focused on real estate
this year because when I got into office, what I
found were a myriad number of real estate projects that
were big money, you know, big investments with taxpayer dollars,
and they didn't really have a lot of great planning
accompanying them. And those are real ripe for that's exactly
(10:55):
the type of thing you would want your controller looking at,
you know, are these big projects that don't that's seem
to be going sideways.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So a couple of those, you.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Know, we've talked about I've talked about our the Youth
Opportunity Union, which was to have replaced the YMCA of
Dutchess County down on Montgomery Street, the twenty six Oakley
Street homeless Street. The homeless Shelter project has been something
obviously that's been of great interest to the City of Poughkeepsie,
and there's a few others.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Out there and a little controversial as well.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of money, and it's
we need to have a solution for housing our homeless population.
I think it's I think really what we need is
a regional solution. But I wouldn't blame any community for,
you know, asking questions about why here, Why why between
our schools or why next to our Boys and Girls club?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
So a size your arithmetic abilities? You know that, you
know you were first saying, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but
seven plus five is twelve. If you're Republican or a Democrat,
it's still twelve. But then there's the values of dimension
to it. That's not necessary. I'm answer you a question. Really,
(12:05):
excuse me, it's not necessarily arithmetic. You know, when you
make a judgment on a real estate project, whether it's
the homeless shells are twenty six Oakley or or the MCA.
I mean, it seems as if values come into play there.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Less than you would imagine. So most of the work
that we're doing this year was already on the audit
dock at when I arrived. So the judgment call is
made by the auditors. You know, they see something and
they say, well, we ought to it's time for us
to take a look into that. Or they identify patterns
when they're paying the bills. Oh, this department is struggling with.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
X, Y and Z.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Let's you know, this is maybe an area where we
do a report. Obviously I make the final call. I'm
a controller, but what my job is to do is
to make sure that we're selecting projects that are going
to be important examples that have important findings and recommendations
for the county government to make improvements to the way
that they operate. And like I said, also you know
(13:04):
a topic that is interesting to the public, something that
is that the public ought to know. And in doing so,
I'm also making sure that those reports are done in
a in a very objective way, in a non partisan way.
If you look through our reports and reports for you know,
all the controllers going back to nineteen sixty eight, you'll
be hard pressed to find subjective statements and opinions that
(13:26):
is no place in a controller's report. What we do
is everything that we say has to be verified by
public documentation. You know, we have to find we have
to have a verification. What I always say is the
last person you ever want to get an argument with
as an auditor because they probably have a folder to
share with you that validates their statement.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Two things I want to mention you've brought up the
why is that? Is that still on the table with
the city. We can see as far as you know,
budget is concerned.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
I haven't seen it in the budget, and the county
executive will be releasing a budget this month, and that's
certainly something that I'll be looking for. You know, what
happened was the old YMCA of Dutchess County was the
county paid to take it down and then they paid
for architectural and engineering plans to replace it with the
Youth Opportunity Union.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
It came back and the project was one.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Hundred and sixty five million dollars. Our county budget is
six hundred and thirty million dollars. I would have been
the second largest capital project in Dutchess County history, I think, and.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
I don't know how the whatever plan there was to
fund that, but it's not there. And after our report
came out four days later, the site was cleaned up.
They were tearing down the weeds, fixing up the fences,
and making the site look a little better, getting rid
of the drug paraphernalia and whatever.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I'd been there.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
And then and then it sounded like the city and
the county began discussions again about, you know, how to
rehabilitate this project, what would be acceptable to the City
of Poughkeepsie, et cetera. You know, I'm not privy to
those conversations. I hear things occasionally. It's not my place
to say how that's going. But you know, the great
this outcome we could get from having done that report
earlier this year is a youth opportunity union. That's the
(15:05):
whole point. And I use this report as an example
for how the Controller's office really works and can be
an agent of change. So what happened, So we had,
you know, three changes in administration at the county level.
We had three county executives in three years and during
the life span of this project. And it's very easy
for a ball to get dropped. It's very easy for
you know, priorities to change and for people to lose
focus and what have you. And I'm not accusing anybody
(15:26):
of doing that. The point is is that my job
is to say, hold on now. Remember we said we
were going to, you know, do twenty five million dollars
over here. You only did four point five million. We
made a promise to the City of Poughkeepsie. Let's get
our eyeback on that ball. And to the County Executive's credit,
she reached out to the City of Poughkeepsie and started
following up and seeing what could be done. It's like
exactly how you would want this process to play out.
(15:48):
I did my part, and the county executive is apparently
doing her part. That's the best outcome that we could
get from this. You know, this is how the controller
can really make change. It's not about pointing fingers at people.
It's about reminding about priorities and pointing out pro sesses
and improvements that could be made.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I'm all very proud to be a touches county citizen.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And this is how this is how people learn, you know,
who's who's running the show, so to speak, behind the
scenes by listening to finding, I would pat in the
polgo oh man.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
You find I'm finding and one of the things I'm
finding out And I mean this in a nice way. Uh.
One of the political skills, which sometimes people think of
as a dirty word, resemble manners. And uh so, I
mean you have great political skills or great manners. When
I ask the question and the answer is no, you said, well,
(16:38):
not as much as you would think. Not as much
as you would think is a much more hospitable answer.
And no.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
In my line of work, there's what we need to
do is we need to be precise with our language,
you know. And so yeah, I try to I try
to say, is precisely what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Well, and you do it like you you speak quickly. Thanks,
you know, to be fast and precises. Uh. You know,
they're both good good to have, you know. But when
you talk about the relationships, you know, very casually you
mentioned and then the count of executive stalks to the
(17:19):
mayor and they did X, Y and z. How much
in your observation. Do the relations among political leaders how
much can they facilitate or impede project.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Well, quite a bit, I think, you know, the personal
relationships of the foundation for getting work done. You know,
it was very important for me, for example, to start
off on a really great footing with Souserno, who's in
another party. You know, I made a point last year
of never pointing a finger at anybody. You know, my
opponent and I had our differences, but I wasn't on
(17:54):
some kind of like ideological warpath on the you know,
my my approach to this always has been, you know,
you need to have somebody with experience and independen It's
not necessarily a Democrat versus a Republican. When I got
into office, you know, I shared that message with Sue
and I said, you know, a lot of the stuff
that we're going to be looking at this year in
twenty twenty five in the Controller's office really predates her.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
You Know.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
The way that the Controller's office works is that we
always look backwards to find lessons about how we can
do better in the future. Right, we don't do oversight
on policy while it's being made, but we look back
and we say, hey, how did that go? And I
said that to her, I said, a lot of this
stuff is going to precede you. This is an opportunity
for you and I to work together and to improve
county government together. I think she was very receptive to
(18:35):
that message. We've had a warm relationship. I think, you know,
we have quite a bit of reports coming out in
the next few months, and the proof will be in
the pudding, you know. But I firmly believe that relationships
are important, and that's why I started off with trying
to have good relationships with everybody in the county government.
I went around and spoke to every single commissioner and
the Dutchess County government in my first couple months, and
(18:55):
I said, let me know how I can help, let
me know what I can audit for you, show you
some things in your department that might be helpful to you.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And I think that approach is really important. I come
in you for that because it's about collaboration. You know,
we have one city, one county, and if we're not
able to communicate and collaborate, nothing ever really gets done,
you know, And so so taking that approach I think
is really important. If you're just tuning in, you're listening
to finding out with Pete and the Poet Golden. I'm
Peter and I'm the Poet Golden. We're here with dan
(19:25):
Imar Blair, Dutchess County Controller who's currently running again for
re election.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And you know when both Cusserino and Ivonne Flowers, the
mayor of Poughkeepsie and the county executive, you know, they're
both very decent, likable people, and I know they certainly
have the differences. I mean, I think the Oakley Street
thing is an example of that. But I'd be surprised
(19:53):
if they didn't both like and respect each other one another.
And I think that I I agree with you that
it really makes a difference. Whereas if you have an
egotistical leader, ego gets in the way of a lot.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
And you know, if we're focused on partisanship, if we're
focused on us versus them, you're never gonna We're never
going to get anything done, you know. And so I
when I went into this job, yeah I had to
run for election, Yeah I had to run as a Democrat.
I am a Democrat. But when I get into office,
I'm working like I worked at the New York City
the education. You know, I'm like, I'm trying to figure out, Okay,
(20:30):
how can we improve that? What can we do here?
You know, maybe we need more training, you know. I
look at it as in a problem solving way, not
in a you know, I'm a democratic controller. I need
to do democratic things.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Right right right. That definitely can get in the wave,
even just leadership on a very on a very basic level,
if you approach it, it would be like me walking
into a classroom and going, well, I'm a democratic poet,
you know, or you know where am I am? I?
A moderate? Am I associate?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
What?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Am I am? My conservative? And I've been called all
of the above, you know. So it's like, no, I'm
here to give information to these children, and that's what matters.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And I have never been called the conservative. Yeah, it's
democrat you have in this country. But you know, you
mentioned in the beginning of the show about working in
New York City Department of Education and how big that is.
In other words, I see one point one million students
(21:26):
in the department.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
At one point, to including pre K.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
I thank you, okay, foolish me. I wasn't including pre K,
I think. But when you have projects that big companies
to Duchess County. I mean the way you put it,
the deal with the Department of Education in New York City,
the budget is as big as well Dutchess Country's budget.
You get that right.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
No, but the division of the Department of Education that
I managed was as big as Dutchess Country. Yeah, we
had a high five hundred million dollar budget.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Okay. So the numbers are not intimidating to you.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
No, not the numbers, No, I think the thing that's
always intimidating is trying to get the greatest amount of
detail out of departments, to you know, understand how they
want to use their money, and to hold them to
that right. That is always the challenge. It's never the
dollar amount. In my office, for example, you know, we
think about we think about tasks, we think about processes.
(22:25):
We don't always think about dollars. We with the same zeal.
One of my auditors kicked back a twelve dollars payment
as they did a one point five million dollar payment
a few months ago, because they to them, it's just
catching something right and sending it back and giving instructions
on how to fix.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It, and to say to someone you know, you're we're
going to audit, you can be very intimidated for for
whoever's being you know, audited at the time, Robin, I
remember what Robin Lowe was saying, look at it more
or less as a guide, like we want to come
in and not sort of chastise you, but actually help
you grow so you can do it better the next time.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Exactly right, that is exactly that. It is a testament
to Robin's credibility and skill. She that's the correct approach
to audits. You know. That's why you know, everybody's municipalities
go out and they have to get audits. You know,
it's because it's a way to just have that assurance.
You know, if you need to go out and get grants,
you want to be you want to have been audited.
You want to say, yeah, my financials are audited and
(23:24):
you know somebody from outside looked this over and it's
all legit there. Audits seem to be kind of this. Uh,
there's this approach that we have about audits because the
controller's office is an elected position, that it's an audit
is like some kind of weapon that the controller possesses
and he can fire it at his political enemies, and
it's just it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
You could do that, you.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Could, you could, and then you would help your enemies
with their financial operations, right, you know, And that's just
it's just such a backwards way of thinking about this work,
you know, because anybody who's in this industry understands that
an audit is a benefit. Look, if you get audited,
and I've been audited plenty of times when i was
in the Department of Education. By the chance, the controller
(24:09):
down in New York City, multiple controllers. It's a lot
of work, you know, when the controller starts auditing something
that you're working on, you got to pull all these
files that you probably haven't looked at in a while,
and you've got to do a lot of leg work.
But the outcome is great, you know. Like what you
get is, like you said, like Robin said, a guide,
you know, almost like an instruction manual of what you
can do to be better. And if we're all a
(24:30):
continuous learners as adults, we should never object to being
audited or having an audit across our desk.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
You know. This is the most optimistic version and a
lot that I've ever heard. And when you mentioned the
Anthony Parisi the district Concerney when he was being taking
over the department.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
He asked you, yes, the previous controller. Okay, so there
are like two different parties.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
You had a Democrat going to a Republican saying please
audit me.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, and that's an sentence, and one like if you
followed up to the national politics is completely you know that
doesn't happen now. But you know, the the poetic value
or the emotion value to the word ordered is a
scary word to most people. But even hearing you use
(25:19):
the word several times in the last few minutes, it
took the scare at it. You know, I mean what
it's a process.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
It's sort of It's up there with the word consequence.
A lot of times people think of the word consequence
is something very negative. You know, you're going to have
consequence where it's actually on the flip side, can be
a very positive word. You create great consequences for yourself
versus negative consequences.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Okay, I'm not a tax sheet, but if I was
a tax sheep, I would not want to be audited.
Is that a fair thanks to I.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Think that's a fair thing.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
You know, I think when you when when if someone
has a negative reaction to an audit, there probably didn't
want to be audited, you know, I don't know. Any
probably didn't want to be told how to do their job.
I don't know, but I.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Mean it may simply not have an understanding of it,
you know, of what the the benefit of it can be.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Yeah, what it all comes down to is the controller.
The controller has has access to a lot of information
at the county level, and our job, you know, we
deal with objective truth, you know, and if someone is
scared of the truth, they're probably going to be scared
of the audit or they're going to be scared of
the report, you know. And but we do it in
(26:32):
a way like I said, that never points fingers that
it will never be the objective of the work in
our office or any controller's office.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You know.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
The whole point is to point. You point your fingers
at processes, you point your finger at policies and procedures,
and you say these are the things that we should
be doing, not saying you haven't done them.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
And you also have power over. Power over is probably
not from you as comfortable with as I might be.
But nonprofits, nonprofit agencies can be you can order them,
that's right, son, Yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
So pretty much any constituent unit of the county, or
any nonprofit partner or really anybody where that has county
funds circulating in their books can be audited by the
Dutchess County Controller. I would say typically there's maybe two
or three agencies looked at a year. I think this
year we're looking at two agencies. We did a report
(27:25):
that came out earlier this year on Cornell Cooperative Extension,
A really great pleasure to work with them. We have
another one going on right now, but I can't talk
about that until it's completed. And it's a valuable thing
because when we want to know that taxpayer dollars aren't
being wasted, that doesn't stop when the check gets cut
to our agency partners right when they are using when
they're spending our money. We want to know that arma
(27:46):
dollars are being used efficiently on that end as well.
So this is all about finding efficiency for tax pair dollars.
And whether it's you know, whether it's within the county
government or it's out in one of our partners, it
serves the same purpose.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So let the voters know again, again, give them your name,
what line you'll be running on, and the date of
the election.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
So my name is dan IMR. Blair.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
I am a Dutchess County Controller running for reelection on
the Democratic Party and Working Families party lines. And election
day is November fourth, and early voting starts October twenty
fifth and ends November two.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And if someone wanted to know more information about you,
do you have a general website they can go to
to look.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
At my campaign, you can go to Danimarblair dot com.
Or to look at our reports and look at the
work I do as controller. You can go to Duchess
NY dot gov and go to the Controller's page.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And i'mar spelled I M A R. I mean nor
a y m A R is announced simar, but it's
spelled ay.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
My name is a little funny.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah. And the electoral process, how do you like that?
I mean giving you a disposition, you know, with finance
and objectivity. How do you like the actual process of
running for office?
Speaker 3 (28:59):
I really quite enjoy it, I would say.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
When I first ran, I was a Beacon City council
member for five years before I was in the Controller's office,
and the first time that I ran. What I found
that I really loved was knocking on doors and talking
to voters one on one. Once I was a candidate myself,
I didn't really like it when I was going for
others because you know, people would ask you really specific questions.
You know, well, you know, what does Barack Obama think
(29:22):
of this? People asked me what I thought of some bit.
I had the answer yesterday that contact being where people are,
you know, and you know, just learning about people and
what matters to them is the richest thing. It's it's
the campaign process, but it's also like the field research
that you do, so when you get into office, you
know exactly what to do, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
So thank you so much for being here today. Dan,
we appreciate you, and once again go to Dan A.
Mart it's a y M. A. R. Blair. Thank you
for having me, no, thank you so much into our listeners.
Thank you for listening to finding out with Pete and
the poll Go. We appreciate you
Good morning. You'll finding out with Pete and the Poe Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Peter and I'm the poet Gold.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And we're on the air this morning with Dan aimm blabbed.
And before we get to Dan and his run full
control of Dutchess County, we're going to go right to
the poet Goal for her weekly poem prayer incantation. Gol
please let it roll.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You got it, Peter. This morning, I'm going to do
one Land. We're always making up stories about us and them,
Them and us. Lives appear distant, some divided by fences,
not quite within reach, misunderstood. Are we losing sight? We
exist on one land.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
One land, one spirit, and in the spirit of human beings.
We are luckily enough to have elections in American Dutchess
County and Dan, you're running for controller. Not everyone knows
what a controller is.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Explain that, sure, yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I when I first ran for office last year in
the special election, I was surprised at how many people
weren't familiar with the office of the Controller. I had
to basically before introducing myself to voters, I had to
introduce what a controller was and what a controller is.
It is the financial watchdog for the county. Technically, it's
the chief auditing officer according to the charter, and the
(01:12):
responsibility of the controller is, well, you know, to pay
all the bills and audit all of the payments to
make sure that you know, all of the payments that
we're making are appropriate and done appropriately. And we also
have a function where we can do reporting in our
office where we're overlooking you know, we're looking over larger
scale projects like capital projects and things that we might
(01:33):
want to audit or dig into a little deeper where
we can make findings and recommendations to the county government
to improve their financial operations, but also doubly to inform
the public about what's going on in the county government.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And that position is a non partisan position, correct, I
consider it?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So? Yeah, okay, I mean you're a Democrat.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
I'm a Democrat and Working Families Party candidate. But I
can tell you doing this work for many years, a
couple of decades now, there's no Democratic or Republican way
to make sure two numbers miss.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
You know.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
What I think you really need to have in this
position is not somebody who subscribes to a certain ideology,
but you need to have somebody who understands the work
and somebody who knows what they're doing and had I
had twenty years of experiencing government finance before I got
into the Controller's office in January.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
What were you doing prior to I used to work
in New York City Department of Education.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I worked there for fifteen years.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Actually, yeah, I was there for three mayors and five
or six schools chancellors.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It was.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
It's a tough environment in New York City, but I
had a lot of success there. I was the chief
operating officer for the Division of Teaching and Learning, which
at the time was the largest division division in the
Department of Education, and they had a budget as big
as Dutchess Counties. Wow, So we had some experience managing
big budgets before.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I mean, teaching and learning the only things to count
in the education system, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Education, well, with that division dealt with was everything that
was school facing, whether it was curriculum, teacher training, career,
technical education, any of those things.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And I don't know if we mentioned that. Do we
mention that he's the current control.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Right, that's right? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
I was elected last November in a special election for
a one year term and started in January.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And that was Robin Lois, the former controller. She got
a different job in the States. She's actually a very
high upstate official at this point, and she was terrific
at her job and in Dutchess County. And so when
she got I don't know if they call it promoted
(03:38):
or appointed or what story was, but she was on
the show several times.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Right, and then she didn't she didn't run for that position.
I think she was appointed, right, all Right, what I
just out of curious. I'm always curious, what's the trajectory
that brought you to this field in your life.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
I think, like a lot of people, you kind of
stumble into something and then you find what you like,
you know. I went to school to study political science,
and by the time I left college, I fancied myself
a writer and a poet. But I came back reality
hit for me a little bit when I moved to
New York City and I needed to pay rent. But
(04:18):
I got a job at Goldman Sachs. I had a
job at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. I found myself really
comfortable in that environment, and I had a few other jobs,
kind of doing project management work with a heavy focus
on financial operations, and I felt like that was the
kind of work that I enjoyed doing. But I was
also kind of discovering about myself that profit wasn't really
a motivator for me. So I went into public service,
(04:39):
went into the New York City Department of Education.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's always interesting when when you find people. Okay, yes, that.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Was the shortest, most informative, exciting. I mean, if you're
looking for an economical person, you have the economy of
language going for you.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Demonstrated absolutely. I was my train of thought. So you
take it away, Well, it's going to come back to me.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I'll have a tri But you just brushed by the
profit was not a driving you. You had someone that right.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
No, I was going to say, I always uh find
it a kid when someone says profit is not the
motivation for me, but but public services, because I always
feel that that if you, you know, if you take
care of the money to go take care of itself,
you know, to a certain extent, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
You know what I I remember, I remember when I
came to this conclusion. It was so I was working
in product development and we were doing all these educational texts,
and we signed off and we got them delivered to
the client. It was a school district somewhere, and it
was a big money deal. And I remember at the
end of the night the sales team coming together and
toasting and they were doing tequila shots and I was
(05:47):
and I was in the room and they toasted and
they said for the kids, and I just kind of thought, like,
that's that's not really why we're here. You know, we're
not We're not here for the kids. We're closing a
big deal about quite a few hundre of thousands of
dollars here. And you know, I found a position at
the New York City Department of Education, and I really
thrived there. And I found that, you know, on a
(06:09):
on a public sector salary, that I could live on that,
and I could have a family with that, and that
I didn't need more than I had, And you know,
I had been through a lot in my personal life
and was ready to give back, and it all just
kind of made sense for me.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You know, that's again a lot of precision in that language,
and it's almost contradictory. I mean, one of the things
about money is that it has an adjective quality. I mean,
you know, some people it might be not susceptible to it,
and you'd be one of them, it seems. But it's that,
(06:44):
you know, money is such a dominant part of our culture,
and on a personal level, we've all had a whiff
of greed, and when you notice that's not for you,
it's freezer to do tho.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
To stop chasing dollars, you know, and to just enjoy
what you have is a real blessing, right.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I always say that people will, you know, I try
to bring into people's attention that you will give up
on money. You know, people will get to this place
where they'll leave their job, but they'll complain about it,
I don't have enough money, but they'll they'll quit on
money if something doesn't go right for them, if they
don't feel right, you know. So it's also a very
emotional parallel when you're trying to make a living for yourself,
(07:28):
but you'll leave it on the table if you don't
feel right about if someone has treated me or just
respected me. It's like, yeah, but did you say to
pay your bills? Yeah, but that doesn't matter, I don't
you know. It's interesting, what's the.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Saying, if you find a job you love, you'll never
work a day in your life, right right, Absolutely, a
bit of that too.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
But you would imagine, you know, people around money, you know,
you know, if you work on Wall Street, money is
a big deal, and excess money is actually the name
of it. I worked on Wollship for five years and
it's the only time I ever expel greed in myself,
you know, because you don't Greed is not an emotion
(08:04):
you can have until you already have too much. You know. Yeah,
you can be cheap, you can be frugal, you can
be whatever you want, but when you have too much,
you are in danger of being greedy. The comparison is,
you know, you're not going to get drunken like as
you drink the gin. I mean, and when you do
(08:30):
drink the gin, you don't have a choice of being
drunk or not. You get drunk, and so uh. In
a public official, you know, in public service there is
a way of putting. But in an elected public official
whose job it is to be sober around money, that's
a very important quality that you're somehow inoculated against greed.
(08:55):
And your resume seems to indicate you are inoculated against greed.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I think so I suppose so.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
I mean, my wife and I we have everything that
we need, and our kids are happy and have everything
that they need. And what more do I need? More
of Amazon boxes showing up at the door with stuff
I don't need?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Right, right, right right? You know, I think the storage
industry is sort of like a huge industry in America.
It's such an example of excess, sure is you know, Yeah,
if you're just tuning in, you listen to Finding Out
with Pete and the Poet gold and I'm the poet Golden.
We're here with Dan Iimar Blair, Dutchess County comptroller, who's
(09:35):
also running for re election.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And give me a sense of what kind of projects
you're looking at in Dutchess County currently you're looking forward,
where would you be paying special attention?
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Sure, So, the areas where we would normally pay special
attention would be large capital projects, you know, like big
things that we've purchased buildings or construction projects. We would
look at audits where maybe we have a change in leadership.
So if there's a new department head and you know,
a new commissioner in the county government, that's a good
time to do an audit because they're coming in and
you give them, you know, kind of findings and recommendations
(10:12):
of ways of improving things in their in their department
as they're inheriting it. For example, when the district attorney
got into office, Anthony Parisi, he was the first new
district attorney for quite a while, so he reached out
to the controller a different party, you know, and he said, hey,
can you please audit me, you know, let me know
what I need to improve over here. That's the approach
that I take to the work of the you know,
(10:34):
of these types of things there. And there's some other examples,
of course, but I have been focused on real estate
this year because when I got into office, what I
found were a myriad number of real estate projects that
were big money, you know, big investments with taxpayer dollars,
and they didn't really have a lot of great planning
accompanying them. And those are real ripe for that's exactly
(10:55):
the type of thing you would want your controller looking at,
you know, are these big projects that don't that's seem
to be going sideways.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So a couple of those, you.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Know, we've talked about I've talked about our the Youth
Opportunity Union, which was to have replaced the YMCA of
Dutchess County down on Montgomery Street, the twenty six Oakley
Street homeless Street. The homeless Shelter project has been something
obviously that's been of great interest to the City of Poughkeepsie,
and there's a few others.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Out there and a little controversial as well.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of money, and it's
we need to have a solution for housing our homeless population.
I think it's I think really what we need is
a regional solution. But I wouldn't blame any community for,
you know, asking questions about why here, Why why between
our schools or why next to our Boys and Girls club?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
So a size your arithmetic abilities? You know that, you
know you were first saying, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but
seven plus five is twelve. If you're Republican or a Democrat,
it's still twelve. But then there's the values of dimension
to it. That's not necessary. I'm answer you a question. Really,
(12:05):
excuse me, it's not necessarily arithmetic. You know, when you
make a judgment on a real estate project, whether it's
the homeless shells are twenty six Oakley or or the MCA.
I mean, it seems as if values come into play there.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Less than you would imagine. So most of the work
that we're doing this year was already on the audit
dock at when I arrived. So the judgment call is
made by the auditors. You know, they see something and
they say, well, we ought to it's time for us
to take a look into that. Or they identify patterns
when they're paying the bills. Oh, this department is struggling with.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
X, Y and Z.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Let's you know, this is maybe an area where we
do a report. Obviously I make the final call. I'm
a controller, but what my job is to do is
to make sure that we're selecting projects that are going
to be important examples that have important findings and recommendations
for the county government to make improvements to the way
that they operate. And like I said, also you know
(13:04):
a topic that is interesting to the public, something that
is that the public ought to know. And in doing so,
I'm also making sure that those reports are done in
a in a very objective way, in a non partisan way.
If you look through our reports and reports for you know,
all the controllers going back to nineteen sixty eight, you'll
be hard pressed to find subjective statements and opinions that
(13:26):
is no place in a controller's report. What we do
is everything that we say has to be verified by
public documentation. You know, we have to find we have
to have a verification. What I always say is the
last person you ever want to get an argument with
as an auditor because they probably have a folder to
share with you that validates their statement.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Two things I want to mention you've brought up the
why is that? Is that still on the table with
the city. We can see as far as you know,
budget is concerned.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
I haven't seen it in the budget, and the county
executive will be releasing a budget this month, and that's
certainly something that I'll be looking for. You know, what
happened was the old YMCA of Dutchess County was the
county paid to take it down and then they paid
for architectural and engineering plans to replace it with the
Youth Opportunity Union.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
It came back and the project was one.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Hundred and sixty five million dollars. Our county budget is
six hundred and thirty million dollars. I would have been
the second largest capital project in Dutchess County history, I think, and.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
I don't know how the whatever plan there was to
fund that, but it's not there. And after our report
came out four days later, the site was cleaned up.
They were tearing down the weeds, fixing up the fences,
and making the site look a little better, getting rid
of the drug paraphernalia and whatever.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I'd been there.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
And then and then it sounded like the city and
the county began discussions again about, you know, how to
rehabilitate this project, what would be acceptable to the City
of Poughkeepsie, et cetera. You know, I'm not privy to
those conversations. I hear things occasionally. It's not my place
to say how that's going. But you know, the great
this outcome we could get from having done that report
earlier this year is a youth opportunity union. That's the
(15:05):
whole point. And I use this report as an example
for how the Controller's office really works and can be
an agent of change. So what happened, So we had,
you know, three changes in administration at the county level.
We had three county executives in three years and during
the life span of this project. And it's very easy
for a ball to get dropped. It's very easy for
you know, priorities to change and for people to lose
focus and what have you. And I'm not accusing anybody
(15:26):
of doing that. The point is is that my job
is to say, hold on now. Remember we said we
were going to, you know, do twenty five million dollars
over here. You only did four point five million. We
made a promise to the City of Poughkeepsie. Let's get
our eyeback on that ball. And to the County Executive's credit,
she reached out to the City of Poughkeepsie and started
following up and seeing what could be done. It's like
exactly how you would want this process to play out.
(15:48):
I did my part, and the county executive is apparently
doing her part. That's the best outcome that we could
get from this. You know, this is how the controller
can really make change. It's not about pointing fingers at people.
It's about reminding about priorities and pointing out pro sesses
and improvements that could be made.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I'm all very proud to be a touches county citizen.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And this is how this is how people learn, you know,
who's who's running the show, so to speak, behind the
scenes by listening to finding, I would pat in the
polgo oh man.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
You find I'm finding and one of the things I'm
finding out And I mean this in a nice way. Uh.
One of the political skills, which sometimes people think of
as a dirty word, resemble manners. And uh so, I
mean you have great political skills or great manners. When
I ask the question and the answer is no, you said, well,
(16:38):
not as much as you would think. Not as much
as you would think is a much more hospitable answer.
And no.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
In my line of work, there's what we need to
do is we need to be precise with our language,
you know. And so yeah, I try to I try
to say, is precisely what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Well, and you do it like you you speak quickly. Thanks,
you know, to be fast and precises. Uh. You know,
they're both good good to have, you know. But when
you talk about the relationships, you know, very casually you
mentioned and then the count of executive stalks to the
(17:19):
mayor and they did X, Y and z. How much
in your observation. Do the relations among political leaders how
much can they facilitate or impede project.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Well, quite a bit, I think, you know, the personal
relationships of the foundation for getting work done. You know,
it was very important for me, for example, to start
off on a really great footing with Souserno, who's in
another party. You know, I made a point last year
of never pointing a finger at anybody. You know, my
opponent and I had our differences, but I wasn't on
(17:54):
some kind of like ideological warpath on the you know,
my my approach to this always has been, you know,
you need to have somebody with experience and independen It's
not necessarily a Democrat versus a Republican. When I got
into office, you know, I shared that message with Sue
and I said, you know, a lot of the stuff
that we're going to be looking at this year in
twenty twenty five in the Controller's office really predates her.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
You Know.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
The way that the Controller's office works is that we
always look backwards to find lessons about how we can
do better in the future. Right, we don't do oversight
on policy while it's being made, but we look back
and we say, hey, how did that go? And I
said that to her, I said, a lot of this
stuff is going to precede you. This is an opportunity
for you and I to work together and to improve
county government together. I think she was very receptive to
(18:35):
that message. We've had a warm relationship. I think, you know,
we have quite a bit of reports coming out in
the next few months, and the proof will be in
the pudding, you know. But I firmly believe that relationships
are important, and that's why I started off with trying
to have good relationships with everybody in the county government.
I went around and spoke to every single commissioner and
the Dutchess County government in my first couple months, and
(18:55):
I said, let me know how I can help, let
me know what I can audit for you, show you
some things in your department that might be helpful to you.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And I think that approach is really important. I come
in you for that because it's about collaboration. You know,
we have one city, one county, and if we're not
able to communicate and collaborate, nothing ever really gets done,
you know, And so so taking that approach I think
is really important. If you're just tuning in, you're listening
to finding out with Pete and the Poet Golden. I'm
Peter and I'm the Poet Golden. We're here with dan
(19:25):
Imar Blair, Dutchess County Controller who's currently running again for
re election.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And you know when both Cusserino and Ivonne Flowers, the
mayor of Poughkeepsie and the county executive, you know, they're
both very decent, likable people, and I know they certainly
have the differences. I mean, I think the Oakley Street
thing is an example of that. But I'd be surprised
(19:53):
if they didn't both like and respect each other one another.
And I think that I I agree with you that
it really makes a difference. Whereas if you have an
egotistical leader, ego gets in the way of a lot.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
And you know, if we're focused on partisanship, if we're
focused on us versus them, you're never gonna We're never
going to get anything done, you know. And so I
when I went into this job, yeah I had to
run for election, Yeah I had to run as a Democrat.
I am a Democrat. But when I get into office,
I'm working like I worked at the New York City
the education. You know, I'm like, I'm trying to figure out, Okay,
(20:30):
how can we improve that? What can we do here?
You know, maybe we need more training, you know. I
look at it as in a problem solving way, not
in a you know, I'm a democratic controller. I need
to do democratic things.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Right right right. That definitely can get in the wave,
even just leadership on a very on a very basic level,
if you approach it, it would be like me walking
into a classroom and going, well, I'm a democratic poet,
you know, or you know where am I am? I?
A moderate? Am I associate?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
What?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Am I am? My conservative? And I've been called all
of the above, you know. So it's like, no, I'm
here to give information to these children, and that's what matters.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And I have never been called the conservative. Yeah, it's
democrat you have in this country. But you know, you
mentioned in the beginning of the show about working in
New York City Department of Education and how big that is.
In other words, I see one point one million students
(21:26):
in the department.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
At one point, to including pre K.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
I thank you, okay, foolish me. I wasn't including pre K,
I think. But when you have projects that big companies
to Duchess County. I mean the way you put it,
the deal with the Department of Education in New York City,
the budget is as big as well Dutchess Country's budget.
You get that right.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
No, but the division of the Department of Education that
I managed was as big as Dutchess Country. Yeah, we
had a high five hundred million dollar budget.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Okay. So the numbers are not intimidating to you.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
No, not the numbers, No, I think the thing that's
always intimidating is trying to get the greatest amount of
detail out of departments, to you know, understand how they
want to use their money, and to hold them to
that right. That is always the challenge. It's never the
dollar amount. In my office, for example, you know, we
think about we think about tasks, we think about processes.
(22:25):
We don't always think about dollars. We with the same zeal.
One of my auditors kicked back a twelve dollars payment
as they did a one point five million dollar payment
a few months ago, because they to them, it's just
catching something right and sending it back and giving instructions
on how to fix.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It, and to say to someone you know, you're we're
going to audit, you can be very intimidated for for
whoever's being you know, audited at the time, Robin, I
remember what Robin Lowe was saying, look at it more
or less as a guide, like we want to come
in and not sort of chastise you, but actually help
you grow so you can do it better the next time.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Exactly right, that is exactly that. It is a testament
to Robin's credibility and skill. She that's the correct approach
to audits. You know. That's why you know, everybody's municipalities
go out and they have to get audits. You know,
it's because it's a way to just have that assurance.
You know, if you need to go out and get grants,
you want to be you want to have been audited.
You want to say, yeah, my financials are audited and
(23:24):
you know somebody from outside looked this over and it's
all legit there. Audits seem to be kind of this. Uh,
there's this approach that we have about audits because the
controller's office is an elected position, that it's an audit
is like some kind of weapon that the controller possesses
and he can fire it at his political enemies, and
it's just it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
You could do that, you.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Could, you could, and then you would help your enemies
with their financial operations, right, you know, And that's just
it's just such a backwards way of thinking about this work,
you know, because anybody who's in this industry understands that
an audit is a benefit. Look, if you get audited,
and I've been audited plenty of times when i was
in the Department of Education. By the chance, the controller
(24:09):
down in New York City, multiple controllers. It's a lot
of work, you know, when the controller starts auditing something
that you're working on, you got to pull all these
files that you probably haven't looked at in a while,
and you've got to do a lot of leg work.
But the outcome is great, you know. Like what you
get is, like you said, like Robin said, a guide,
you know, almost like an instruction manual of what you
can do to be better. And if we're all a
(24:30):
continuous learners as adults, we should never object to being
audited or having an audit across our desk.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
You know. This is the most optimistic version and a
lot that I've ever heard. And when you mentioned the
Anthony Parisi the district Concerney when he was being taking
over the department.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
He asked you, yes, the previous controller. Okay, so there
are like two different parties.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
You had a Democrat going to a Republican saying please
audit me.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, and that's an sentence, and one like if you
followed up to the national politics is completely you know that
doesn't happen now. But you know, the the poetic value
or the emotion value to the word ordered is a
scary word to most people. But even hearing you use
(25:19):
the word several times in the last few minutes, it
took the scare at it. You know, I mean what
it's a process.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
It's sort of It's up there with the word consequence.
A lot of times people think of the word consequence
is something very negative. You know, you're going to have
consequence where it's actually on the flip side, can be
a very positive word. You create great consequences for yourself
versus negative consequences.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Okay, I'm not a tax sheet, but if I was
a tax sheep, I would not want to be audited.
Is that a fair thanks to I.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Think that's a fair thing.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
You know, I think when you when when if someone
has a negative reaction to an audit, there probably didn't
want to be audited, you know, I don't know. Any
probably didn't want to be told how to do their job.
I don't know, but I.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Mean it may simply not have an understanding of it,
you know, of what the the benefit of it can be.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Yeah, what it all comes down to is the controller.
The controller has has access to a lot of information
at the county level, and our job, you know, we
deal with objective truth, you know, and if someone is
scared of the truth, they're probably going to be scared
of the audit or they're going to be scared of
the report, you know. And but we do it in
(26:32):
a way like I said, that never points fingers that
it will never be the objective of the work in
our office or any controller's office.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You know.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
The whole point is to point. You point your fingers
at processes, you point your finger at policies and procedures,
and you say these are the things that we should
be doing, not saying you haven't done them.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
And you also have power over. Power over is probably
not from you as comfortable with as I might be.
But nonprofits, nonprofit agencies can be you can order them,
that's right, son, Yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
So pretty much any constituent unit of the county, or
any nonprofit partner or really anybody where that has county
funds circulating in their books can be audited by the
Dutchess County Controller. I would say typically there's maybe two
or three agencies looked at a year. I think this
year we're looking at two agencies. We did a report
(27:25):
that came out earlier this year on Cornell Cooperative Extension,
A really great pleasure to work with them. We have
another one going on right now, but I can't talk
about that until it's completed. And it's a valuable thing
because when we want to know that taxpayer dollars aren't
being wasted, that doesn't stop when the check gets cut
to our agency partners right when they are using when
they're spending our money. We want to know that arma
(27:46):
dollars are being used efficiently on that end as well.
So this is all about finding efficiency for tax pair dollars.
And whether it's you know, whether it's within the county
government or it's out in one of our partners, it
serves the same purpose.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So let the voters know again, again, give them your name,
what line you'll be running on, and the date of
the election.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
So my name is dan IMR. Blair.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
I am a Dutchess County Controller running for reelection on
the Democratic Party and Working Families party lines. And election
day is November fourth, and early voting starts October twenty
fifth and ends November two.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And if someone wanted to know more information about you,
do you have a general website they can go to
to look.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
At my campaign, you can go to Danimarblair dot com.
Or to look at our reports and look at the
work I do as controller. You can go to Duchess
NY dot gov and go to the Controller's page.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And i'mar spelled I M A R. I mean nor
a y m A R is announced simar, but it's
spelled ay.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
My name is a little funny.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah. And the electoral process, how do you like that?
I mean giving you a disposition, you know, with finance
and objectivity. How do you like the actual process of
running for office?
Speaker 3 (28:59):
I really quite enjoy it, I would say.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
When I first ran, I was a Beacon City council
member for five years before I was in the Controller's office,
and the first time that I ran. What I found
that I really loved was knocking on doors and talking
to voters one on one. Once I was a candidate myself,
I didn't really like it when I was going for
others because you know, people would ask you really specific questions.
You know, well, you know, what does Barack Obama think
(29:22):
of this? People asked me what I thought of some bit.
I had the answer yesterday that contact being where people are,
you know, and you know, just learning about people and
what matters to them is the richest thing. It's it's
the campaign process, but it's also like the field research
that you do, so when you get into office, you
know exactly what to do, you know.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
So thank you so much for being here today. Dan,
we appreciate you, and once again go to Dan A.
Mart it's a y M. A. R. Blair. Thank you
for having me, no, thank you so much into our listeners.
Thank you for listening to finding out with Pete and
the poll Go. We appreciate you
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