Cutten, Gallagher emphasize experience in pitches to voters
Ulster County voters are poised to elect a new comptroller to serve as the county’s fiscal watchdog for the first time since 2008.
March Gallagher and Lisa Cutten are vying for the position now held by Interim Comptroller Adele Reiter. Reiter was appointed to the interim position in May, when former Comptroller Elliott Auerbach stepped down to take a position in state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office.
Auerbach was the county’s first elected comptroller, serving from 2009 until earlier this year.
Gallagher is running on the Democratic and Working Families lines.
Cutten will hold the Republican, Conservative and Independence lines. Cutten was tapped by the GOP and other parties after she lost a bid for the Democratic line at the party’s convention in June. After losing the Democratic line to Gallagher, Cutten switched her party enrollment from Democrat to non-enrolled. However, hat change won’t take effect until after the November election.
A certified public accountant, Cutten has spent her career in municipal finance. She served as the director of county’s Office of Accountability, Compliance and Efficiency from 2014 until June was she was dismissed from the position by newly elected County Executive Pat Ryan. Cutten has also served as deputy county budget director, senior auditor in the county Comptroller’s Office, county auditor, comptroller for the towns of Fishkill and Poughkeepsie, and city of Kingston treasurer.
Gallagher is an attorney and former president and chief executive officer of Community Foundations
of the Hudson Valley, a position she resigned from to run for comptroller. According to her LinkedIn profile, Gallagher previously was chief strategy officer for Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, deputy planning director and director of business services for Ulster County, and chairwoman of the Ulster County Industrial Development Agency.
Both women have touted their experience as making them uniquely qualified to become the county’s next comptroller.
The comptroller’s job is to watch the money,” Cutten said during a recent interview with the Daily Freeman. “I have a proven record of stopping fraud and standing up for the taxpayer for more than 30 years.”
She said as a county auditor in 2006, she uncovered widespread fraud involving the former Lower Esopus River Watch.
Gallagher, too, pointed to her efforts as chairwoman of the Ulster County Industrial Development Agency to hold businesses receiving tax breaks more accountable and said she would bring a “fresh pair of eyes” and a
new approach to the Comptroller’s Office.
“I think one of the reasons this is an elected position is because we wanted someone here who can translate complicated financial information to the public, Legislature and executive and understand how fiscal information will impact policymaking,” Gallagher said during the Freeman interview.
Both have also been critical of the other’s records, and each has questioned the ability of the other to remain independent.
“There’s a situation where circumstances can create a familiarity threat,” Gallagher said, noting that Cutten had spent a decade in county government. “I would say that right there is a management participation threat,” she said.
Likewise, Cutten questioned whether it would be a conflict of interest for Gallagher to audit not-forprofit organizations that she worked with while running the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley.
“How would we know what my opponent would choose not to audit because of those relationships?” Cutten asked.
The winner of the November election will serve the remaining two years of Auerbach’s four-year term.
The comptroller’s job will be on the ballot again in 2021, and the winner will serve a full four-year term. Under a county law enacted earlier this year, all candidates elected in the 2019 election will be limited to serving 12 years in office beginning in 2020.