Delaware County attorney Porter Kirkwood does not review all county contracts

I have been covering information provided to me as to the audit of Delaware County no-bid contracts by the New York State Comptroller's office (after the Delaware County stalled by FOIL request of the same information).

You can read my previous posts analyzing the information I received from the Comptroller's office here, here, here, here and here.




Here is the NYS Comptroller's office's report about the interview of the auditor with Porter Kirkwood.

Kirkwood apparently reviews only the contracts that are "given to him" "by respective department heads", and only for "legal format, language, etc.".

That means that Kirkwood does not direct the county "request-for-proposals" process, advertising for public bidding, or decisions of the county whether to submit contracts for public bidding, which are all duties of a county attorney.

The report indicates that Kirkwood "is not reviewing all the contracts of the County".

Yet, the very first thing when he was selected County Attorney was that Kirkwood did is he asked for a $40,000 raise from his $96,000 salary.

The question is - if Kirkwood does not know how to do his job, why should he be paid anything at all out of taxpayers' pocket?