Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick expresses his concerns about the alleged incident involving an Erie County Sheriff's chief last year, and how it may affect who pays for the damage to several cars.
Hardwick has one important question on his mind.
"If the employee was off duty, I wasn't sure we should be paying that. So yesterday, I sent a letter to the county attorney Jeremy Toth, saying is there a differentiation? First of all, do we have written policy guidelines, number one and number two, do we differentiate between whether the person is on or off duty," said Hardwick during an appearance Thursday with David Bellavia on WBEN.
Hardwick says the claims came through piecemeal, and seven different invoices came through.
"Each person whose vehicle was hit was treated as an independent vendor. It wasn't like with different lawyers. So the actually, the checks went out to the lawyers, not the individuals whose car was hit. So it was something that I wouldn't expect in a normal course of business," Hardwick explained. "Our people who routinely process these sorts of claims where a vehicle gets hit by a county vehicle and another vehicle hit gets hit by another county vehicle to pick up on. It's not as if it came through and our accountant here was looking at, this county car hits seven vehicles. That's not the way it came."
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Hardiwick says at first, he could not find the take home vehicle in the county's fleet. He later discovered that was part of the Sheriff's fleet, and was accounted for.