ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. \u2014 Incumbent Democrat Kevin Hardwick is facing off against Republican Christine Czarnik in the race for Erie County comptroller.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re running on our record and I think it\u2019s a great record to run,\u201d said Hardwick.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s so much more that the comptroller needs to be doing,\u201d said Czarnik.<\/p>\n
There’s a focus on facts and not partisan politics for both campaigns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve never called a press conference. We’ve never spiked the football,” said Hardwick. “Instead, we’ve tried to help those departments become better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI really want to get the politics out of the office of Comptroller and restore professionalism,\u201d said Czarnik.<\/p>\n
Czarnik says her 30 years as an accountant provide knowledge Hardwick doesn\u2019t have, pointing to an unredacted check he gave to local media.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot having a financial background, the comptroller didn’t know that that was a breach of security,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n
Hardwick says that it \u201cwas not a huge deal,\u201d but changes were made afterward to prevent it from happening again.<\/p>\n
He points to audits, which found counterfeit checks and embezzlement, as a measure of success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s $600,000\/$700,000 right there that we identified for recovery for taxpayers,\u201d Hardwick added.<\/p>\n
Knowing his way around the New York government is valuable too.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re dealing with all sorts of civil service regulations and other state impediments to acting efficiently, so you have to know your public administration,\u201d Hardwick said.<\/p>\n
Czarnick is confident her \u201ctaxpayer watchdog\u201d approach is best.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really need to take the time to dig and find where the waste is and where the excessive spending is, and have the courage to call it out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. \u2014 Incumbent Democrat Kevin Hardwick is facing off against Republican Christine Czarnik in the race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8255,1611,8257,136,138,137,139,50,8256],"class_list":["post-10179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-buffalo","tag-decision-2025","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-viktoria-hallikaar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}