On August 23,
2024, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced the
following Municipal and School District audits
were posted on the Internet.
Click on the text
in COLOR to access the text of the audit.
Northeastern
Clinton Central School District – Transportation State Aid (Clinton County)
District
officials did not accurately apply for all applicable transportation aid. As a
result, the district was at risk of losing aid totaling $391,494. However, once
auditors informed officials of this risk, the school business manager promptly
filed accurate aid applications with the State Education Department, and the
aid was subsequently approved. Had officials established procedures to ensure
transportation aid applications were accurately filed, the district’s aid may
not have been delayed.
Northeastern Clinton Central School District – Foster Care
Tuition Billing (Clinton County)
District
officials did not properly bill tuition for nonresident foster care students
enrolled at the district. As a result, as of June 30, 2023, officials had not
billed $95,210 of the $129,538 in tuition to which it was entitled for the
2020-21 through 2022-23 school years and made tuition calculation errors
totaling $3,036 in the amounts billed.
Campbell-Savona Central School District – Student State Aid
(Steuben County)
District
officials did not properly claim a total of $65,953 in potential state aid for
special education and homeless students, including $29,939 of potential aid the
district will not receive because officials did not file claims within the
filing timeframes. Specifically, $57,176 in estimated state aid was not
properly claimed by the district for some special education students and $8,777
in potential state aid was not properly claimed for some students classified as
homeless.
Town of Summit – Town Clerk (Schoharie County)
Although fees
were properly recorded, the town clerk did not always deposit or remit fees in
a timely manner. Specifically, the clerk did not deposit 98% of the fees
collected in accordance with state law which requires the clerk to deposit fees
within three business days after total collections exceed $250. The clerk also
did not perform monthly bank reconciliations or accountability analyses during
the audit period.
Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Board of Cooperative Educational
Services (BOCES) – Building Access Badge Accounts
BOCES
officials did not properly manage and monitor badge accounts used to access
BOCES buildings. Badges that remain active without a purpose can be lost,
stolen or misused, potentially resulting in unauthorized building access. BOCES
officials did not deactivate 48 badges that were no longer needed out of the 87
active non-employee individual badge accounts. They also created 25 duplicate
accounts in the building access system and physical badges for current BOCES
employees who already had badges. In addition, they did not deactivate and
could not physically locate the badges for 15 of 25 shared accounts selected
for testing. Lastly, an additional 48 shared accounts were discovered and
deactivated because the badges were lost.
Town of Harpersfield – Claims Auditing (Delaware County)
The board did
not properly audit claims to determine whether the claims represented actual
and necessary expenditures and whether proposed payments were for valid
purposes. Of the 428 claims totaling $478,628 that were paid during the audit
period, auditors reviewed 124 claims totaling $400,604 and determined that the
board did not properly audit individual claim packets and supporting
documentation. Rather, the board reviewed only an abstract of unaudited claims
each month and approved the abstracts for payment. Auditors found 30 claims
totaling $69,281 were improperly paid before board approval and 22 claims were
paid that included sales tax totaling $460.
Town of Otselic – Audit Follow Up (Chenango County)
Town
officials have made almost no progress on implementing corrective action
proposed in the original audit. Of the 11 audit recommendations, one was fully
implemented, one recommendation was partially implemented, and nine
recommendations were not implemented, including the recommendation that the
board should require the supervisor to provide accurate monthly financial reports.
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