Town IDA Makes the Suspension List

Another round of kudos has to go to Town Supervisor Mark Evers for permitting the Town IDA to fail to file its required annual report with the State Comptroller. As a result, the State Comptroller has suspended our IDA's authority to issues sales tax exemption.

Evers, you may recall, couldn't wait to get rid of all his political adversaries on the IDA when he gained a new town board majority last year with Lou Desso and Al Spain. They placed Evers on the IDA while shunning its former Board Member and Chairman, Councilman Alan Michaels who was removed. Also added at the time were political pals Paul Lombardi and Jeff Spain, who was then the Democratic Party Chairman.

Once in charge, Evers became IDA Chairman and managed to let things run the same way he runs his own Supervisor's Office. No steps were taken to make sure the agency fulfilled its annual obligation to file a financial report with the State.

Now why should this bother Evers who routinely has failed to file required reports of town finances on time with the State as required by law, preferring to suffer instead, the indignity of those constant nagging "reminder" letters from the State Comptroller.

As always, there is an excuse. The fellow who they delegated to file the report is a military officer who was sent to Iraq. Rather than take steps to assign the responsibility elsewhere, Evers and company did what they do best, nothing, causing the State Comptroller to suspend the Town IDA exemption authority.

Hey, this is how Evers runs his office,how he manages the overspent water 14 contract, how he manages town funds and union contracts, health insurance buyouts and just about anything else you can think of.

You can read the State Comptrollers report here , his Press Release here and you can read the news report from the Times Union here. Should we mention, that only 5 IDA's in the entire State suffered a suspension and all but one has filed their report since, restoring their tax exemption authority. That one remaining IDA in New York State still on the suspension list with no report filed is North Greenbush.