Audit finds Bergen GOP owes $38,000
By OSHRAT CARMIEL
STAFF WRITER, THE RECORD
They didn't pay income taxes, forgot to disconnect a phone bank after Election Day and stopped making contractual payments on a postage machine.
All told the Bergen County GOP owes about $38,000 to creditors, according to a recent audit.
And that's a good thing.
Because the rank and file expected the audit to put the debt tally much higher.
"It's peanuts," said Paul Duggan, a Republican candidate for freeholder in November. "Thirty-eight thousand dollars is nothing in the grand scheme of things."
Bergen County GOP Chairman Rob Ortiz commissioned the audit in July, days after he took the reigns of the destitute county party, which earlier this year was nearly evicted from its headquarters for failing to pay its rent.
"When I walked in, I said, 'I need to know what I'm walking into,' " Ortiz said about hiring the auditor. "Before we could move forward, I needed to know what I'm standing on."
The audit turned out to be the easy part.
Finding financial documents for the auditor involved a scavenger hunt through boxes, private garages and forgotten filing cabinets -- some of them locked and keyless. A closet at party headquarters on Main Street was stuffed to bursting with old bank statements, phone bills and notices of delinquent payments, Ortiz said.
Barring the discovery of debts the party doesn't know about, the auditors summed up the GOP's financial situation like this: assets, $0; liabilities, $38,176.
Ortiz is working out payment plans to settle the obligations.
"We know where we are now, and we're moving forward," he said.
Republican Robert Yudin, who unsuccessfully ran for freeholder in November, said that, given its minimal debt, the party could have been more generous to his campaign. The extra money, he said, might have secured the GOP a seat on the Freeholder Board.
"I'm very disappointed that we did not get the kind of assistance that I felt the whole ticket was entitled to," Yudin said.
"I had been led to believe there was a massive, substantial debt that [Ortiz] was left with. I was pleasantly surprised. ... I consider $38,000 of debt to be very, very reasonable."
The Bergen County Republican Organization has made headlines in recent years for its chronic penury. Its phone service was disconnected this year, and officials were locked out of the Hackensack headquarters in January after falling months behind in rent. Republicans were also outspent by Democrats more than tenfold in recent county elections.
That news, coupled with infrequent campaign filings with the state, had Bergen Republicans guessing about how low the bottom line would go.
"It was pretty much a slipshod operation, with virtually no transparency," said Thom Ammirato, a GOP consultant who has advised Bergen County campaigns.
"There were just boxes and boxes and filing cabinets full of junk."
The audit lists several liabilities, each one a testament to lax management or financial oversight in recent years.
It recommends that the party have only one federal tax identification number, and that "formal books and records" be kept -- suggestions implying that neither practice had been followed.
Among its other findings:
"They just told Pitney Bowes to come pick it up," Ortiz said. "That doesn't relieve you of your [contractual] obligation."
"We used to have phones in the back that were turned on at every election and turned off after," said Ray Aspinwall, the executive director of the BCRO from 2003 to 2005. Several months after Election Day, "I walked into the back room, I pick up the phone, and it's on."
It's not as though the party doesn't have any income. Campaign reports estimate that a March fund-raiser, featuring presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, raised nearly $100,000 for the party, though much of that appears to have been spent on a divisive June primary for an open seat in the 40th Legislative District.
The audit shows that the party still owes $6,000 to the company that printed the invitations to the Giuliani event.
Former Bergen GOP Chairman Guy Talarico, who initiated the primary battle, stepped down after his slate lost. Ortiz, a lawyer from Ridgewood and a national Republican fund-raiser, was elected chairman in July. Talarico could not be reached for comment.
Ortiz held a fund-raiser in October that took in $120,000, which was spent on the impending election -- including a countywide mailing and radio ad for the freeholder candidates -- rather than on retiring debt, Ortiz said.
"We flew through that money," Ortiz said.
Ortiz said he is negotiating payments with the party's creditors, and has established a payment plan for all the debts that the party uncovered. New bills are being paid on time, he said.
"We're excited about our prospects for 2008," Ortiz said.
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