Out Of Gas: Judge Orders Comptroller To Pay Overdue Fuel Bills

MOUNT VERNON, NY — In a virtual hearing Wednesday evening, Judge Anne E. Minihan ordered Mount Vernon Comptroller Deborah Reynolds to pay overdue fuel bills by noon on Friday to two vendors who supply gas and diesel for city vehicles. Earlier this week, the vendors Sprague and United Metro cut the city off from fuel delivery over the outstanding balances and left city vehicles, including police and fire department emergency vehicles, fuel rationing with as few as five gallons of gas in the tanks.

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The ruling capped off a day of increasing drama at city hall. According to Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard, the comptroller at one point called police when she and her staff went to Reynolds' office in an attempt to find out why the bills were going unpaid.

“Sitting in the Comptroller office with staff patiently waiting for her to accept our bills to pay for our fuel. She called the cops and said we “stormed” her office,” Patterson-Howard explained in a Facebook post Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve been sitting here quietly waiting for an appointment after 10 requests have been ignored over the last three months.”

Patterson-Howard has urged Mount Vernon residents to put pressure on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to remove Reynolds from office. The mayor can not dismiss the comptroller from her elected position. The only person who has the power to remove Reynolds from office is Cuomo. The governor has so far resisted calls to step in, in part because there has not been an elected official removed from office by the Governor in more than a century.

“The Comptroller’s actions or inactions represent a dereliction of duty and yes, she should be removed,” Patterson-Howard said on Wednesday. “The Comptroller’s actions or inactions do go against New York State Penal Law 195 … We cannot handle the public safety and the public health of the citizens of Mount Vernon as a political game.”

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For her part, Reynolds blamed the mayor for bills going unpaid. She has suggested that invoices have not been sent to her office in a timely manner. In public statements, Reynolds suggested that Patterson-Howard is “not up to the job.”

While the mayor praised the judge's decision, she indicated that the ruling might be too late to help right away, saying the problem with paying the vendors in full is that the companies now want guarantees of future payments. Patterson-Howard said she will work to guarantee that the city will put forward $30,000, possibly from external funds, to ensure Mount Vernon has some amount of credit/deposit with the vendors who are understandable wary.