Audit Objective
Determine whether the Town of Albion (Town) Town Supervisor (Supervisor) maintained complete and accurate accounting records and provided reliable financial reports to the Town Board (Board).
Key Findings
The Supervisor did not follow basic accounting practices by maintaining complete and accurate accounting records and financial reports. As a result, the Supervisor provided financial records and reports to the Board that contained significant errors and the Board lacked reliable information to manage the Town’s financial operations. We determined that:
- The Supervisor did not maintain a general ledger, subsidiary revenue and expenditure ledgers or cash receipts and disbursements journals to properly track financial activity.
- The Supervisor’s 2023 revenue and expenditure budget-to-actual reports were not accurate. For example, the reports did not include $551,134 of real property tax revenue and a $109,000 expenditure for a storage building. In addition, budgetary transfers totaling $27,125 were improperly reported as actual expenditures.
- The Supervisor did not account for payroll-related liabilities, maintain proper cash control accounts and reconcile the Town’s bank accounts.
- The Board did not conduct a thorough annual audit of the Supervisor’s 2023 accounting records, as required by New York State Town Law (Town Law) Section 123.
Recommendations
The audit report includes 10 recommendations that, if implemented, will improve the Supervisor’s records and reports and the Board’s oversight of financial operations. Town officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they planned to initiate corrective action. Appendix B includes our comment on an issue raised in the Town’s response.