'Rinky-Dink Software,' 'Ball of Spaghetti' Entangle Township Budget

Although township administrator Eric Campo produced a two-inch-thick budget abstract for West Deptford committee members to review prior to its introduction Thursday, Committeewoman Denice DiCarlo was still dissatisfied with the level of transparency in the documentation.

DiCarlo was the lone dissenter when the 2013 budget was introduced at Thursday's meeting of the West Deptford committee. Among her concerns was that the salary structures it contained didn't seem to add up.

For starters, DiCarlo, who complained previously that she had felt frozen out of the budget process by finance chair Sam Cianfarini and CFO Brenda Sprigman, said that she shouldn't have had to wait two months to access information that is a matter of public record.

“If anyone in this community is to walk into this office tomorrow and say ‘I want to see the salaries of [township officials],’ that is to be produced on demand,” DiCarlo said.

“As a committee person I’m entitled to those reports," she said. "It’s not because I’m trying to be difficult.”

"No, you're entitled," agreed Mayor Ray Chintall.

Absent of such basic information, DiCarlo said, “I feel like I’ve yet to understand even the salaries in this budget.”

Given that township employees' salaries are governed by collective bargaining agreements, DiCarlo said, such items are a major sticking point in assuring that the township won’t run over costs. She grilled Sprigman publicly on their whereabouts.

“Between now and March, when I asked [for these figures], I have two issues of concern," DiCarlo said. "Did we review anyone who’s governed by a collective bargaining agreement, and does this budget represent that salary increase?”

A number of explanations was offered: that Sprigman's work had been signed off on by the township consultants and Campo; that the township's outdated budget software produced different reports even with the same parameters; that the files necessary to compile the report has been deleted.

“The problem is that report is not on her computer,” Chintall said. “It’s missing.”

“This is not a massive exercise to say we can’t find the file,” DiCarlo countered. “From an accountant’s perspective, this should take about four hours to replicate.

"How does anybody who has budget experience, or the [finance committee] chair, get comfortable with a motion on the floor without an exercise being completed?” she asked.

Sprigman countered that the financial consultants retained by West Deptford “absolutely were okay with what we’ve produced.

“They’ve reviewed actual detailed reports,” Sprigman said.

“So why has that not been made available for the actual committee?” DiCarlo asked.

“The stuff that I turned over was approximately 2 inches thick, or thereabouts,” Campo said. “I cannot guarantee that it’s going to be in the exact format that it was last year.”

DiCarlo asked Cianfarini, “Have you seen that analysis?” prior to preparing the budget.

“I based [the figures] off my administrator’s response,” Cianfarini responded.

“I don’t understand why we keep pointing to the administrator,” DiCarlo said. “I thought we all agreed that we got a CFO so Eric [Campo] wouldn’t have to do this stuff.”

“That’s fair,” Cianfarini said, “but this is a new software package. There hasn’t been a general ledger in 20 years. There were no bank reconciliations done last year.”

“The software is inadequate to address that,” Chintall added. “We’re taking steps.”

After the meeting, Sprigman told Patch that DiCarlo had asked her to produce employees’ base salaries, which “didn’t exist anywhere” in the system.

“I didn’t know what the calculations were that somebody else did to arrive at my end number,” she said. “The end number agrees to the budget, but I don’t have the middle pieces; what I don’t have is the historical [records].”

Cianfarini blamed the same “rinky-dink” software as not only causing problems for Sprigman’s auditing but also for “all the bills we constantly reverse for the water department.

“Of the 565 municipalities in the state, 480-plus use Edmunds,” to which the township will be upgrading soon, Cianfarini said. “It’s the standard.

“The water department software dates back to the ‘80s,” he said. “It’s a complete ball of spaghetti from the finance perspective and it’s a complete ball of spaghetti from the folks who run it.

“We’ve got to give [Sprigman] reasonable latitude to fix this mess, and that’s what I’m trying to do,” Cianfarini said.