Disclaimer: Dan Fishman is a friend and someone I once advised as a candidate for state representative during my tenure with the United Independent Party. I have never been paid to work for him or his campaigns in any capacity and am not affiliated with his campaign for Auditor or the Libertarian Party in any way. I am posting this entirely as a friend and a fan of his candidacy.
I agree wholeheartedly with the Boston Globe editorial board. Dan Fishman is the best choice for State Auditor in 2018.
The office of the state auditor could do so much more for Massachusetts, but not under the leadership of Suzanne Bump.
The unfolding payroll scandal at the State Police — which somehow escaped the incumbent Democratic auditor’s notice — is a good example of the sort of waste and abuse that a real activist in the job might ferret out on behalf of taxpayers. An auditor without any partisan axes to grind could shake up the state.
The Globe goes on to write about Dan’s positive attributes:
Fishman worked as a special education teacher, then went back to school to learn computer programming. He has worked at start-ups companies and in IT at Massachusetts General Hospital. A former colleague described him as a “math geek,” adept at managing large amounts of data. Government waste in the 21st century hides in databases like payroll records, and although Fishman isn’t a CPA (neither is Bump), he has an intriguing background for a modern auditor.
Fishman wants to step up payroll audits and post information on the Web for citizens and journalists to scrutinize. And he wants to meet the legal requirements of auditing each agency once every three years. “You’re not allowed to say your job is too complicated in Massachusetts,” he says.
We have regularly complained about the incumbent here for years, the protege of her predecessor Joe “Of course my nephew gets a job” DeNucci. Bump has continued in that vain. There is a conflict of interest with a business she inherited from her late husband. The mix up with auditing the RMV. The failure to audit the State Police who are on the warpath against any civilian oversight. The only signature issue she has consistently adopted is the Republican pet issue of welfare fraud. I am sure Geoff Diehl and Howie Carr are happy to see that. The rest of us shouldn’t be.
This progressive Democrat will pick the libertarian who is beholden to no one on Beacon Hill, who opposes patronage in all its forms, and promises to audit the government from top to bottom including sacred cows like the State Police Democrats and Republicans are too afraid to touch.
I’m afraid a Libertarian will try to audit the government out of existence based on ideology alone and will be hard pressed to find any legitimate expenditure in his opinion. Besides, I think Bump has done a lot of good work in that office and I proudly voted for her re-election.
Dan Fishman will not do that nor does eliminating the government fall under the Auditors purview. Auditing state agencies every three years, including the State Police, does fall under the purview and the incumbent has not even followed her obligation in that area.
Here is a side by side comparison of where they stand on the issues. In my judgment, and that of the Boston Globe, Fishman offers detailed answers while Bump offers vague platitudes.
I get that you are pleased with the incumbent and are a DSC member and straight ticket voter. Not everyone on BMG is and they can make their own judgments in the voting booth. I think someone with the kind of business and technology experience Dan has who is committed to the principles of transparency, fiscal probity, and unaligned with existing special interests on Beacon Hill is a good fit for the office regardless of party. I am voting for Dan Fishman not his party, and would do so for this position no matter the party label next to his name.
You might want a different link than one candidate’s website, but even there I see nothing wrong with Bump’s answers. She has among other things brought the MA Auditor’s office from one of the worst in the nation to one of the best and has been commended by her counterparts in other states.
There only shades of difference between using immigrants to instill fear and using Libertarians for fear. Granted your not raising false concerns about crime and disease, you are raising false concerns about auditing government out of existence, not the concept is the same.
I am legitimately concerned that someone who identifies as Libertarian, a party which believes government governs best which governs least, will approach every audit with the preconceived notion that the spending is overreaching.
There is also a candidate from the Green Party who might be worth a look.
I think Ms. Bump has done more harm than good and needs to be replaced, regardless of her party affiliation.
The purpose of an auditor is to reveal internal abuses, either accidental or intentional. Ms. Bump has shown a propensity to carefully not see major abuses happening within the government while issuing lots of press releases about minor issues that too often seem to pander to right-wing misconceptions about the safety net in our state.
I’ll be voting for Dan Fishman.
If you think Bump is pandering to rightwing misconceptions (a premise I reject entirely), what do you think a Libertarian who likely doesn’t think such programs are the roll of government at all is going to do? I don’t understand why people are so offended by making sure that assistance programs are there for people who need them, the same people who will suffer even more if they are abused by those who don’t. I’d much rather have a Democrat who believes the programs are inherently valuable being the one to make sure they work properly. Besides, this is hardly what she has built either her office or her campaign around.
Can you offer a link where Mr. Fishman asserts that State government should not be conducting audits?
This is a right-wing shibboleth. There has never been any evidence that people who need benefits are being denied them because of “cheats”.
What Ms. Bump did was pander to the lie that welfare recipients cheat. Her public statements focused on the cheats, and ignored the overwhelmingly successful performance of the programs in question.
The analog is a report that breathlessly publishes an expose of the shocking theft of paperclips by minority students, while ignoring the principal who is directing millions of dollars in annual janitorial and security services to a straw man company operated by his family.
The responsibility for making ensuring the existence and value of the social net lies with the legislature. The role of the auditor is to identify financial irregularities and abuse within the government as the government attempts to fulfill its legislative mandates.
I want the auditor to be focused on the largest abuses. I don’t think the personal or political views of the individual are or should be relevant.
As to your first question I think you misunderstood me. My concern is that he WILL audit every government program to death (including doing a lot worse than Bump on the public assistance programs) because he doesn’t believe they should be government programs in the first place. Bump campaigned on the idea that as the party of government Dems need to be first in line to make absolutely sure programs do not get abused and hand ammunition to those who think they should not exist at all. This is one of a whole plethora of issues Bump has addressed and as far as I can tell the subject of a press release in 8 years. Please don’t make her out to be Reagan. There is also no evidence that someone who needs this is being deprived on the basis of checking for fraud. If it does need to be addressed a Dem should do it for the same reason Nixon was the best person to open China.
Ms. Bump issued a 19 page report in April 2018 — most certainly not eight y ears ago — focused on Welfare and Medicaid fraud in Massachusetts. The masslive.com summary was “The 19-page report outlines the $16.9 million in fraud discovered by Auditor Suzanne Bump’s office”.
You made the argument (quoted above) that these welfare audits are needed to ensure that “assistance programs are there for people who need them”. I think the reports only toss red meat to those who oppose them (check the comments section of the above piece).
I offer a different analogy to your Nixon-China comparison. I’m reminded of the preachers and politicians who, when caught with troves of pornography, claimed to be “familiarizing themselves” with the evils they oppose.
The reason I oppose popularly electing judges (as some states do) is that I think a judge should be explicitly non-partisan and non-political. I feel the same about the auditors office. I would be happier if it were an appointed office protected by something like civil service.
I want the auditor to be an expert in accounting, finance, and auditing. I feel that the party affiliation and views of the auditor should be kept separate from the office he or she holds.
Well, I said in 8 years, not 8 years ago, and that sounds like 16.9 million which could have gone to help people who actually need it. I agree that the person should know what she is doing and I believe that Bump does. Needing to be a CPA herself is an argument Mary Connaughton made last time and I wasn’t a fan of that then either. I agree that personal views should not come into play, but don’t trust that someone who openly identifies as Libertarian can do that with this kind of office. I can’t link personal knowledge, but since I have known Suzanne Bump for some years I can vouch directly that she is a strong Democrat who values public assistance and she does not secretly harbor rightwing motives that you seem to ascribe to her.
@Christopher:
I’m not talking about secretly harbored rightwing motives. I’m talking about the actual impact of her actual actions — such as detailed in hesterprynne’s comment.
I’ve never met either candidate. I know what has been happening while Ms. Bump is auditor, and I don’t like it. If Mr. Fishman wins and then acts in ways I dislike, I’ll vote for somebody to replace him when the time comes.
It appears to me that what you’re actually saying is “I’ve known Suzanne Bump for some years and I don’t know Dan Fishman”. That’s perfectly legitimate, and a completely different argument.
There’s a state program known as the “Bureau of Special Investigations” that was created during a peak period of welfare hysteria, got passed around among a few different agencies, and, for the last 15 years or so, has resided in the Auditor’s office.
The law requires this program to investigate welfare fraud and report on its activities each year. Auditor Bump issues reports on this program not each year but each quarter, and a press release on the amount of fraud discovered (which is always minuscule if compared to the size of the programs involved) accompanies each report. Anyone who thinks that the effect of her reports is to reassure the public that welfare is NOT being abused might consider re-reading George Lakoff. At the same time, her office has failed to complete audits of 29 other agencies in the past three years, as CommonWealth has reported.
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Although the Globe did not endorse her for re-election, the Herald did today: I rest my case:
“Even liberal sacred cows aren’t safe. She has rooted out tens of millions of dollars of public benefits fraud, including abuse of EBT cards. She has also discovered nearly a half-billion dollars of waste at MassHealth.”
So far Christopher is using party affiliation as the only barometer that matters to whether someone in public office is doing their job. I think a strong case can be made that Bump is not doing hers. Fishman has always run credible and principled campaigns for public office focused on local issues and issues that cross party lines. We do not agree on every issue, but the issues where we do agree matter to me.
-He is for auditing the state police, Bump has not made a firm commitment to the same
-He is for auditing the T and looking into Keolis contracts and other areas where privatization may have lost the public money, Bump has not made the same
-He is for auditing every public agency every three years as the law requires, a law that Bump has not even come close to following while routinely issuing Republican sounding press releases on welfare fraud
-He has no conflicts of interest, Bump has many as the person also running her late husbands business interests
The second Fishman makes an ideological move, I will be the first to oppose it, and he knows it. As it is, the incumbent has focused entirely on a right wing talking point while ignoring her duties to audit state agencies with political clout like the State Police. Fishman promises to restore non-partisanship to the office. He also has been a consistent voice saying that the Libertarian party has to demonstrate it can govern in order to win. Hardly someone committed to dismantling the entire thing.
I know enough about Bump personally and her record to add that to party label and be satisfied with her work. If Fishman is a different kind of Libertarian OK, but to me party labels mean something and I will default to certain assumptions about what they mean until I see evidence to the contrary a la certain Dems we all know.