Roefaro on GroWest Report: "If I have to be the whistle-blower, so be it"
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WKTV News
Story Created:
Sep 8, 2010 at 3:37 PM EDT
Story Updated:
Sep 8, 2010 at 6:13 PM EDT
UTICA, N.Y. (WKTV) - Wednesday night, the Utica Common Council will receive the report done by a hired attorney regarding the investigation in misused federal funds through non-profit GroWest.
For about five months or so, many have been waiting for the report from Attorney J.K. Hage - the attorney hired by the city of Utica to do the investigation.
That report will be made available to the common council Wednesday evening.
Utica Mayor David Roefaro had the opportunity to look at the report before it went to the council, and said that it exceeded his original expectations.
"The report is very detailed, very informative," Roefaro said. "There's a lot of correction patterns that need to be done. You've got something that's been going on for years. So, it's something that needed correction and this one step in the right direction."
The report outlines the misuse of federal funds through non-profit GroWest - a report Roefaro said he felt needed to be done because whether or not Utica gets federal funds next year will be determined in the next several months.
Mayor Roefaro said the report will show how the City of Utica has fixed the problems at GroWest and that they deserve federal funding despite the issues of the past.
"We're in the process of fixing it," Roefaro said. "The bottom line is - for years, corruption from outside agencies has been going on, and these are real tax dollars that are happening. So if I have to be the whistle-blower, then so be it. I will be the whistle-blower. But these are things that needed to be done. We needed this report. We needed this investigation. There's going to be more that comes out of this."
"The bottom line is - if I've got to take the city through the car wash, I'm going to take it through the car wash," Roefaro added. "Because there is no way that we are going to move forward unless I clean up the sins of the past. And those are just the facts."
Roefaro called the report "very enlightening" to him when it came to conduct with the funding over the years.
"You have to remember, you had community actions of the past, you had a city employee that went to federal prison. These are things that just can't happen anymore," Roefaro said. "And for me to move the city forward, for me to maintain our tax base and our tax dollars, this is what's got to happen."
That report was made available to the Utica Common Council around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, but media and members of the public in attendance were given an Executive Summary of the report.
The report is complete, according to Hage, but the work going into the investigation is not. The executive summary handed out to the media was just a part of the 1,000+ page report document. The full report was only going to the common council.
Many names were listed as defendants in the investigation, ranging from former employees at GroWest to board members at GroWest, to contractors that worked for GroWest.
More details on what is in that report at NEWSChannel 2 at 10 on the CW and NEWSChannel 2 at 11
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