Each and every day taxpayers are learning more disturbing facts about how our state dollars are being wasted by providing disability benefits to people who don’t deserve them. The person in charge of managing and funding these claims is State Comptroller Kevin Lembo, who sadly claims he has been powerless to stop these abuses.

In a pending federal lawsuit by a former employee of the Comptroller Office, it is alleged that disability claims had more to do with politics than one’s ability to work at any job. Lembo should view the comptroller’s mission statement that requires the office “to develop accounting policy and exercise accounting oversight” (State of Connecticut, Office of the State Comptroller, updated June 22, 2015) and examine how his office has come up short.

Lembo’s latest excuse for potentially millions of dollars being incorrectly awarded to applicants is that these disability issues must be reviewed and negotiated through the contracts with state labor unions. However, this excuse is not an acceptable reason for failing to perform required eligibility follow-up tests related to disability retirement benefits. Other failures in the state comptroller’s office, according to the a State Auditors’ Special Memo to Gov. Malloy on June 17, 2015, included failure to follow a key ruling of the Medical Examining Board, failure to follow through completely on a legal investigator’s reports, and not investigating beneficiaries who stopped responding to state surveys. Lembo made the decision to suspend a more currently defined standard of the phrase “suitable and comparable” regarding a return to work and refer it to the collective bargaining process. He also failed to conduct 24-month entitlement reviews, which the state auditors reported may have resulted in millions of overpayments of taxpayer dollars (State of Connecticut Auditors of Public Accounts, June 17, 2015).

The comptroller is responsible of all of the accounting oversight. Lembo cannot pick and choose which areas will have appropriate oversight. The state auditors, who are bipartisan, reported that over 500 retirees who had been receiving disability benefits for over two years have not had a 24-month benefit review, 164 retirees have not had a review for over four years and two retirees have not had a review for over eight years! (State of Connecticut Auditors of Public Accounts, June 17, 2015).

It’s insulting and unfair to saddle taxpayers, with millions in ineligible disability claims, and responsibility clearly falls to Lembo. Malloy and his negotiators can make the changes needed with the state’s labor representatives and Democratic majorities in the legislature can draft new laws to reform this broken process.

What is particularly alarming about the allegation in the federal lawsuit is the undue influence that the state employee labor unions have in deciding eligibility and payments. Politics should play no part in determining whether a worker can perform any type of work. This mismanagement undercuts the state’s credibility to fairly assess all claims, some of which are valid and deserve due process. Additionally, the lawsuit allegations that Lembo deliberately applied the wrong standards for political reasons, and that he and top aides pressured employees to conceal issues, must be thoroughly investigated. The Connecticut Democrats have controlled the comptroller’s office since 1975, and it appears that one-party control does not serve the best interest of Connecticut taxpayers.

Sharon McLaughlin was the Republican challenger to Kevin Lembo in the 2014 election. She lives in Ellington.