The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-03-11
THE BAD BOARD.
Figures Showing the Gross Ex-
trayagance Of the
FreehOlders.
DECEPTIVE BOOKKEEPING
They Queer the Accounts with
Transfers and Deferred
Bills = Fraudulent
Supply Items.
DECEPTIVE BOOKKEEPING
"a the Edttor of the Jerseu citu Ne,rs.

prevails in the Board of Freeholders, and
showed that it arose from the anxiety OF
the individual Freeholders to distribute
the county's money among their political
friends and supporters. How this policy
operates, and to what extent it is carried
on, in utter defiance of public sentiment,
will be shown in this article. OF course
it has been no easy task to get at the facts.
The business of the county is conducted
in such complicated and mysterious
fashion that a person not familiar with
the system, encounters great many diff
culties in trying to trace out the character
and purposes of the immense disburse-
ments that are made by the Board every
year. There is however, one source of
light in all this darkness and confusion,
and that is the annual report OF the
County Collector.
Mr.. Dugan's published accounts of his
receipts and expenditures are perfectly
clear and inteligible SO far as it is posi-
BILE for them to be. He sets down IN his
report, under proper headings, the date OF
each warrant paid by him, the name of the
person to whom the payment is made, the
account against which it is charged, the
number of the voucher, and finally the
amount of the claim. Whenever 1t is
practicable, he also includes a brief state
ment of the nature of the claim, whether
it be for salary or for work done or for
supplies furnished, and in the latter case
he generally adds memorandum as to
the sort of supplies. Whenever this in
formation is omitted or whenever 1t Is
defective the fault does not rest with the
Collector. for all information which he OBJ
tains in regard to these matters IS derived
from the face of the warrant and all WAL
rants are drawn by the officials OF the
Board.
SAMPLE ENTRIES.
On inspecting his report there will be
found such entries for instance as these
Hyde & Co., maps, S. and Index, 1,5o4...... Ss2OO
This shows very clearly that on voucher
No. ,7e4 there was paid to Hyde & Co. for
maps the sum of $22, and that the pay
ment was charged to the appropriation
for stationery and indexing But who
can make head or tail of this kind OF an
entry?-
c. A. Woolsey, supplies S. H. Inst, 1851. .$105.3o
Mrs. P. Kerwin, supplies, s. H. Institute,
1,6S6.. .....-............-.....-' lo'oo
For what were these sums paid? The
warrants on their face and the entry
copied from the warrants show that the
payments were for supplies" but as to
what kind of supplies they were the
reader is left to conjecture. The result is,
if an investigator is trying to find out how
much money was paid in year for any
particular line of goods or materials, he
finds himself hopelessly baff1ed by the
substitution of this convenient term
supplies" in place of definite state
ment of the kind of supplies
MISLEADING TRANSFERS.
Another obstacle with which the in
ouirer has to contend in tracing the eX-
penditures of the Board is the practice
which prevails of shifting the funds of the
Board around from one appropriation to
another until they become so confused
and intermixed as to almost defy every
effort to understand or explain their con
dition.
The fiscal year begins on December
and terminates on November following.
For the last fiscal year the Board, which
decides for itself how much money 1t Will
raise, created eighteen separate appropria-
tions. OF these, every single one was ex-
hausted on November 30 of last year eX-
cepting the incidental account which had
a balance of $500, and the bonded debt and
interest accounts, which had an aggregate
balance of $4,000. But there were no less
than eighteen transfers of moneys from
period. Whenever an appropriation
became exhausted money was transferred
to it from one or more other appropria-
tions, and when O majority OF all the
appropriations were either exhausted
completely or on their last legs, the whole
of them were dumped bodily into the
incidental account, and thereafter every
expenditure, instead of being charged to
its proper appropriation, was charged to
the incidental account. This final trans
fer occurred last year as early as Septem-
Der 5, and from that date until the end of
the year scarcely any claims, except for
salary, were paid, for the very excellent
thot thara mOnpV with
which to pay them.
DEFERRED BILLS.
The extravaganza, however, did not
abate, but was kept up in the fine old
fashion of previous months. This became
very evident when after the beginning of
the present fiscal year on December l,
claims bearing date since December l, but
really contracted before then, began to
pour in on the County Collector. By jan
uary over one hundred thousand dollars
worth of such claims had been presented
to him for payment. and of these at least
eighty per cent must have been incurred
during the closing weeks OF last year.
This means that the Board exceeded it's
appropriation during that year to the ex-
tent of about $S1, 900.
STARTLING, INDEED.
To show how this wastefulnees is
brought about have been studying the
County COLLECTOR 5 report lOf Jue pdSU tWO
years and find in them some very start
ling figures.
The number of inmates at the different
institutions at Snake Hill averages about
twelve hundred, including prisoners, pau
pers and lunattcs OF both sexes and all
ages. Many of these are children, many
are decrepit old people and about three
hundred of them are prisoners. But all
Of them seem to possess the most phenom-
email appetites, Judging from the bills which
the Board pays for their food. Between
December /, 1856, and November 30, 1887,
they managed to consume 81, S94.32 worth
of fresh meat and 50, .06 worth of milk.
This allowance is about equivalent, at the
contract prices, to half pound of meat
and one pint of milk per day for every
man, woman and child, although many Of
the inmates never get any milk and many
of them, owing to youth or old age, could
not consume daily ration of half a pound
Of meat Then in addition to these items
there was spent for grocery supplies from
December /, 1886, to July 80, 1887, the sum
of S12, SIS 81, which would be at the rate
per year of over fifteen thousand dollars.
These figures do not include bread, fish,
salt meat, vegetables and poultry 80 you