The Asbury Park Press has been creating a force field of blamelessness around the Monmouth County Freeholders, who should stop pointing fingers and start sharing the responsibility for recent fiduciary and budgetary missteps in the county. Lessons learned should include better fiscal oversight by Freehold and less shock and bluster when they goof up.
In a recent article, APP says that Ocean County College's board of trustees is being proactive in requesting quarterly financial reports in order to avoid what happened to their Brookdale colleagues. Since a few members of the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders served with members of Brookdale's board on a panel that reviewed Brookdale's annual budget and presidential compensation package, the Brookdale president's arrangement should have come as no surprise. Why pray tell are the freeholders up in arms about the president's compensation? They reportedly held annual meetings to review Brookdale's finances but did little actual oversight. A ten-minute chat with the President over tea is what I hear. Maybe our freeholders should take more responsibility for minding the store at our public colleges and stop flailing about?
APP raged in an article the other day about prison worker overtime expenses but made only a small mention of the freeholders' authorization of prison employee layoffs, which even APP says caused the overtime situation in the first place. When you have mandatory shifts to cover in the prisons and no one to work them, you have to pay people overtime.
Be mindful of APP's subtle agenda next time you sit down to the paper. Ask yourself what they're emphasizing and what they've left out or shoved to the end of the article. Take your Taxes Are Too High chip off your shoulder and read about what the idiot politicians are doing in Trenton and Freehold with a set of fresh eyes.
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