Satish B. Mohan has hardly been on the job as an Amherst, N.Y., town supervisor for a week, and already he’s made hundreds of enemies.

One of Mohan’s campaign promises was that he would personally review and sign all checks pertaining to town business, and that included payroll checks. So, when he did, the payroll wasn’t available on time last Friday, as Mohan spent “hours” reviewing each and every check.

In a letter attached to each payroll check Friday, Mohan reiterated his pledge from his election campaign in which he promised “to personally review and sign all checks pertaining to Town of Amherst business.”

“If this has created any unanticipated inconvenience, I apologize,” the letter continued. “I am sure you understand the critical importance of the Chief Fiscal Officer taking an active role in managing Town finances.”

[Amherst Police Club president Edward] Guzdek said there are other ways for the supervisor to cross-reference payroll checks with payroll records. “I don’t have a problem if he wants to sign all those checks. If he thinks that’s an effective utilization of his time, that’s up to him,” Guzdek said. “But there’s a detailed report issued to every department that details every employee’s pay, line-by-line.”

“If Dr. Mohan wanted to find and check, he could have checked and audited it that way with no disruption to employees,” he added. — Buffalo News

On rare occasions, breaking a campaign promise might actually be a good thing. For not using a quite obvious and better way of reviewing the town’s expenditures, Satish Mohan is today’s Stupid Person of the Day. Hopefully he’ll not do this again in two weeks…