well Essex County was hailed for its handling of the covid-19 pandemic but a new state investigation finds the $40 million vaccination program there had little oversight that caused wasteful and even abusive spending of taxpayer dollars the state com controller report cites widespread problems like overpaying vendors and questionable paychecks to workers who held other public jobs but a senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports Defenders of Essex County's work say the report only tells one side of the story Essex County pushed hard and fast to get its residents vaccinated against covid it managed to open five fully staffed sites including a former Kmart and a Sears offering shots and testing as it scrambled for vaccine and promoted the jab you ready number eight you can go down last one on the right we had to be first and we had to be prepared for one reason we had no choice ultimately Essex administered more than 622,000 covid shots but a new report claims problems plagued how the county spent some of its $40 million do in federal covid funding the state com controller cites significant deficiencies in the way essics obtain supplies monitored contracts and oversaw vendors shortcomings that expose the county to avoidable risks of fraud waste and abuse of public funds the comproller noted the government's obligation to protect taxpayer funds doesn't go away during an emergency the idea is don't screw up follow the rules follow the procedures all right and it becomes easier that way or at least make every effort to document what you've done that can minimize the sting if something happens Rutter's government policy expert Mark feifer says officials did legitimately use emergency no bid contracts to make quick decisions as they confronted block supply chains during the pandemic but the comproller found overused that perk and violated public bidding rules made 15 payments totaling more than $870,000 with no invoices spent 17 million on extra workers without properly recording whether they all showed up paid one staffer 130,000 bucks but never explained what she did and paid a rooc call Vendor an extra 110,000 and oversight essics didn't notice until the comproller pointed it out and that's my on contract management not enough resources were spent to manage those contracts to ensure that controls were in place and it was monitoring done to prevent that type of the circumstance from happening and then monitoring to see if it did happen what do you do about it Asic did fire three workers with questionable hours the overpaid robocall vendor Dunton consultings politically connected to powerful County Democrats and Essex will let it repay that money with an unsigned zero interest loan own County exec Joe Devan chenzo called the com controller's report a gotcha that's unbalanced unfair and does not accurately depict Essex County's response to the pandemic the com controller's documents riddled with inaccuracies I'm not saying that we were perfect but when any wrongdoing was identified we acted swiftly other critics agreed that it feels to us that they're looking to make headlines just to make headlines John denardio heads the New Jersey associ a of counties he criticized what he called the com trollers Monday morning quarterbacking which ignored Essex County's overall performance they focus on the negative because the mindset is again we're going to find waste Fraud and Abuse and and we're going to move forward and and the real challenge that I've long had with these reports and and I know I'm repeating myself is again there's really no recourse for Essex County to go to a Judiciary the comproller recommends Essex should hire an auditor to judge justify expenses just in case the feds come looking to claw back some of that pandemic Aid I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News