Town of Evans – Employee Benefits (2024M-53) | Office of the New York State Comptroller

Issued Date

September 20, 2024

Audit Objective

Determine whether Town of Evans (Town) officials maintained leave records and paid separation and health insurance opt-out payments (opt-out payments) that were accurate, supported and approved.

Key Findings

The Town’s leave records and separation payments were generally not accurate, supported and/or approved. Opt-out payments were generally accurate; however, they were not properly supported or approved.

We reviewed leave records for 27 of the Town’s 80 employees and determined that 373.5 of the 6,077 hours of leave time used by these employees was recorded incorrectly or not at all in the payroll system.
Four separation payments totaling $11,282 were inaccurate or unsupported.
The former Town Supervisor (Supervisor) received four unsupported opt-out payments totaling $6,000.Officials were unable to explain why the former Supervisor was treated differently than other Board members.

These errors and discrepancies occurred and were not detected or corrected due to a variety of factors including a decentralized process for maintaining leave records and a lack of oversight of leave records, separation payments and opt-out payments.

Recommendations

The audit report includes nine recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the Town’s employee benefits practices.

Town officials agreed with our recommendations and have indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.

Audit Period

January 1, 2020 – November 29, 2023.We extended our audit period back to January 1, 2015 to review Board approval of opt-out payments.

Background

The Town, located in Erie County, is governed by an elected Town Board (Board) which is composed of a Supervisor and four Councilmembers. The Board is responsible for the Town’s financial affairs.

The Supervisor is the Town’s chief financial officer, personnel director, appointing officer and budget director and is responsible for maintaining human resource records, financial records and certifying payroll. The Supervisor resigned in February 2023, transferring these responsibilities to the Deputy Supervisor and reducing the Board to four members for the rest of 2023.

The Senior Personnel Clerk (Personnel Clerk) assists the Supervisor by processing payroll and entering leave used into the computerized payroll system using both manual and electronic timecards provided by various department heads. The part-time payroll clerk reports directly to the Personnel Clerk and assists the Personnel Clerk with manual data entry.