Tom DiNapoli on His Case for Reelection as New York State Comptroller

When you talk about being able to sort of take that independent oversight role, step back from a lot of the policymaking conversations or even the budget setting and doing more of the budget monitoring oversight and helping the state on this long term trajectory, as you mentioned.

What do you point to as ways you felt like you've had an impact on that? Where have you been able to, you know, impact the direction of the state, the way the state does business to make it healthier, make it stronger over the course of time? What would you point to as sort of the top accomplishments or top highlights where you felt like you have led the office in a way to have an impact on the direction of the state?

I mean it's one of the challenges of the office, right? So when we do an audit or we issue a report, we have no enforcement authority, right? People sometimes say, well, you have these audits on how Medicaid can save billions of dollars.

And why is it that your audits seem to always show some of the same problems? I said, well, part of the problem is we can recommend – we can go back and do a follow-up audit – Sometimes agencies adopt our recommendations.

Sometimes they don't.

So there are some certainly of our audits that have been particularly impactful.

Certainly over the past year, our audit looking at how certain discrimination cases were handled by the Division of Human Rights at the state level resulted in a total leadership change.

We've done – What it's on maternal health, particularly the bad outcomes of black maternal health that we saw some real positive changes in terms of how the Department of Health handles that.

I'd say in a broader context, one of the items that we've been calling out for a number of years now is New York being poorly positioned as far as.

It's budget with rainy day reserve funds.

And to the credit of the current governor and recent legislators, legislatures, they have increased the rainy day reserves to the highest level that they've ever been.

That's an example, though, where I give them credit for doing that.

But in this past year's budget, which is largest in the state's history, it was a missed opportunity.

They didn't add any more money.

And I wish that they had had.

So that's an example of an area where I think we had an impact.

I would have liked to have seen a little more of an impact.

But those are just a quick sense.

We have been able to use the bully pulpit.

And the last thing I would just mention – not with 100% success, but there have been repeated attempts to take away our independence and our ability to review contracts and certain spending.

It's happened with this governor.

It certainly happened more aggressively with the previous governor.

By and large, by and large, thanks to the support of good government groups and the legislature, most of what would have really gutted the office's oversight and that what we call pre-order authority has been pushed back against.

And I think that showed that folks understood the work that we do is important.

Again, we didn't win 100% of some of that, but to maintain and protect the autonomy of this office, again, because we're a less visible office than others, I think that that is an achievement that I'm proud of.

When you talk about being able to sort of take that independent oversight role, step back from a lot of the policymaking conversations or even the budget setting and doing more of the budget monitoring oversight and helping the state on this long term trajectory, as you mentioned.

What do you point to as ways you felt like you've had an impact on that? Where have you been able to, you know, impact the direction of the state, the way the state does business to make it healthier, make it stronger over the course of time? What would you point to as sort of the top accomplishments or top highlights where you felt like you have led the office in a way to have an impact on the direction of the state?

I mean it's one of the challenges of the office, right? So when we do an audit or we issue a report, we have no enforcement authority, right? People sometimes say, well, you have these audits on how Medicaid can save billions of dollars.

And why is it that your audits seem to always show some of the same problems? I said, well, part of the problem is we can recommend – we can go back and do a follow-up audit – Sometimes agencies adopt our recommendations.

Sometimes they don't.

So there are some certainly of our audits that have been particularly impactful.

Certainly over the past year, our audit looking at how certain discrimination cases were handled by the Division of Human Rights at the state level resulted in a total leadership change.

We've done – What it's on maternal health, particularly the bad outcomes of black maternal health that we saw some real positive changes in terms of how the Department of Health handles that.

I'd say in a broader context, one of the items that we've been calling out for a number of years now is New York being poorly positioned as far as.

It's budget with rainy day reserve funds.

And to the credit of the current governor and recent legislators, legislatures, they have increased the rainy day reserves to the highest level that they've ever been.

That's an example, though, where I give them credit for doing that.

But in this past year's budget, which is largest in the state's history, it was a missed opportunity.

They didn't add any more money.

And I wish that they had had.

So that's an example of an area where I think we had an impact.

I would have liked to have seen a little more of an impact.

But those are just a quick sense.

We have been able to use the bully pulpit.

And the last thing I would just mention – not with 100% success, but there have been repeated attempts to take away our independence and our ability to review contracts and certain spending.

It's happened with this governor.

It certainly happened more aggressively with the previous governor.

By and large, by and large, thanks to the support of good government groups and the legislature, most of what would have really gutted the office's oversight and that what we call pre-order authority has been pushed back against.

And I think that showed that folks understood the work that we do is important.

Again, we didn't win 100% of some of that, but to maintain and protect the autonomy of this office, again, because we're a less visible office than others, I think that that is an achievement that I'm proud of.