The office of New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli on Friday released an audit report indicating Sag Harbor let some minor claims errors slip by between July 1, 2020, and March 31, 2022. The report states that “although all claims were appropriate, audited, and approved before payment, the claims auditor did not ensure claims were supported.”
Of the 208 invoices reviewed — totaling $1.3 million and representing a small portion of the 6,000-plus invoices processed by the district during the audit period — the comptroller found that 122 of them “lacked adequate supporting documentation.” That means information such as a purchase order was missing; lengthy state contracts, some thousands of pages long, weren’t attached; or that the invoices were flawed in some way, containing, for instance, prices that didn’t match a contract or fees billed as a lump sum instead of hourly.
Nearly all of the claims in question concerned insurance or utilities such as phone and internet service, trash hauling, fuel, hardware supplies, plumbing, and printing. Some also involved highly specialized tools and materials for Sag Harbor’s competitive high school robotics team. The invoices ranged in price from $103.29 for propane to $145,892 for insurance.
“In the grand scheme of things, they did a risk assessment of the district and looked at every single area. This is what they decided to audit,” Ms. Buscemi said yesterday. “And inside the audit, they say it twice, that all claims were ‘valid, mathematically correct, and paid after the claims audit.’ . . . All in all, when you look at the dollar amounts, these were very small potatoes.”