Former Point Borough CFO: 'I Did Nothing Wrong'

Judy Block, who was Point Borough's chief financial officer for about 25 years, is refuting claims made in an that she failed to record and reconcile the borough's financial information properly last year and left the records "in complete disarray."

"I didn't do anything wrong," said Block, in response to an article about an auditor's annual financial statement that said she had failed to keep general ledgers and use internal controls.

"I'm not responsible for internal controls, Dave Maffei is," said Block, referring to the borough administrator/clerk. "He's the administrator. When he does the budget and looks at how much is being spent, he gets all his information from my office. He's responsible for the finances of this town."

Block had retired in June from her full-time position, came back in August part-time, and then left again during the first week of December.

An annual financial statement done by Kevin Frenia of Holman and Frenia paints a picture of a CFO completely failing to do her job.

When asked about whether Maffei failed to supervise Block properly, given how much she has been criticized in the Frenia report, Mayor William Schroeder and Councilman Chris Leitner, the chairman of the council's finance committee, said it was not Maffei's responsibility to get involved in every aspect of Block's job and that they do not blame him for what they describe as Block's failings.

Maffei said in an interview Tuesday that Block had state-mandated duties to perform correctly and that it is not his fault she allegedly failed to do them properly.

"She has statutory duties, including having internal financial controls," Maffei said. "That's her responsibility, not mine. I have my own statutory duties as clerk."

Block responds to the Frenia report by saying that Maffei and a few other borough officials failed to cooperate with her so that she could do her job correctly. She said she wishes Maffei had listened to her complaints about a lack of cooperation from borough tax collector Bernadine Pearce.

"The tax collector is required by law to give a monthly tax collection report to the CFO by the 10th of every month and she wasn't giving them to me from July on," Block said.

The reports are "break-downs" of what the collector deposited from tax payments each month, Block said.

Block said that Sue Nauss, another employee in the tax collector's office, had been providing Block with monthly reports on tax deposits so that Block could reconcile those figures to the monthly bank statements.

Block said she had been using those reports to manually reconcile the tax deposit figures with the monthly bank statements.

The Frenia report acknowledges that Block had "attempted" to manually reconcile the tax deposit reports with the monthly bank statements, but alleges it was not done correctly.

"I was doing it manually for 25 years and Frenia was doing our audits for 10 to 15 years," Block said. "Why is it that none of the previous audits criticized me for doing it manually? I manually reconciled them when I was getting the tax reports from Sue. After that, I couldn't, except for a few smaller accounts, because I wasn't getting the reports from Bernie Pearce."

Block says Nauss left in June, leaving the task to Pearce. Maffei says Nauss left during the first week of September, partially because she had difficulty using the new Edmunds computer system.

Block said, "Sue was the only one who knew how to use the new computer system," she said, referring to an Edmunds computer system the borough began using last summer. "She was the one in the office who did all the work. We were all set to go with the new system, we were supposed to go live in August. We were all ready to go, except for Bernie."

"Bernie Pearce didn't want to learn the new system," she said. "She wasn't making the deposits or recording them in the system. She had a basket full of tax payments people had left. So I couldn't reconcile the tax payments to the bank statements.

"I wrote emails to Dave Maffei and the mayor and council, but Dave never did anything about it," she said.

"He and Bernie are great buddies, they talk for hours," she said. "Dave always took her side."

Pearce could not immediately be reached for comment.

Maffei said Nauss was a supervising tax clerk who had been doing the monthly reports, which are essentially summaries of all tax deposits made during each month. However, Nauss found that with the Edmunds system, she was unable to do monthly reports.

"The system wasn't working right," Maffei said. "So no, Sue wasn't doing the monthly reports anymore. And after she left, Bernie Pearce wasn't doing monthly reports. But Mrs. Pearce and her staff were still doing daily reports and giving the information to Judy. So Judy had the information she needed.

"If you see her record-keeping, that's not even an attempt to keep records properly," he said. "I've been working all year to try to deal with what she left behind."

As far as being "buddies" with Pearce, Maffei acknowledged he had more of a friendlier relationship with Pearce than he did with Block, but says he did not let them color the way he handled requests for information or conflicts between the two officials.

"I was not friends with either Mrs. Pearce or Mrs. Block outside of work," he said. "And I would never let the fact that one person was friendlier towards me get in the way of making sure they got things done."

He refutes the notion that he has given Pearce preferential treatment.

As for an allegation that Block had failed to properly record the municipality's tax levy of $54 million, Block said that she had been unable to do so because Robyn Palughi, the borough tax assessor, said she had never gotten a certification from Ocean County.

Block said that when she left the job in December, the information still had not been sent by the county and she could not properly record the tax levy without that certification.

Maffei referred questions about the certification to Palughi, who could not immediately be reached for comment.

Block also refutes the notion that the mayor and council could not meet with department heads to hear their requests for the operating and capital budgets until last month.

"They could have heard all of their requests during January and February, they didn't have to wait for the annual financial statement to take their requests," Block said. "All of that preliminary work could have been done."